Not surprisingly, most of the works I have orchestrated have been inspired by my experiences of learning to play them (or trying to learn to play them!) on the piano. This is never truer than Beethoven's F Minor Piano Sonata, the Appassionata. I found myself hearing many of the themes in my head on orchestral instruments, and the desire to orchestrate it became greater than the desire to learn to play it! Gustav Holst once said,"Never write anything unless the not writing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you". This was certainly true for me with the Appassionata. I completed it in 2004, but 3 more years of on and off revisions were necessary before I was fully happy with the sound.One of the great things about an orchestra is that not limited in a way that a pianist with only two hands is. In the case of the Appassionata, this enabled me to expand on some of the thematic and rhythmic ideas slightly more explicitly than in the piano original. The themes of both the opening and the final movement for example share the same harmonic grounding- the chord progression of F Minor- to G Flat, so that in the final movement one subconsciously feels a pull back to the first. This orchestral version takes this one step further by reprising the theme of the opening movement towards the end of the final movement, in combination with the final movement theme- with the first movement theme becoming more dominant as the end approaches. Similarly the iconic rhythm of the first movement- first expressed in my version by the timpani- becomes more and more pervasive through the development and the closing passages of the first movement, and re-appears in the timpani in the recapitulation of the final movement.Similarly to the Appassionata, my orchestrations of Chopins Scherzos came from learning to play one of them (the second one). i had previously been unfamiliar with them, however having learned the second, I quickly familiarised myself with the others through recordings (unfortunately I never mastered them at the piano!) As with the Beethoven, I began to hear clear orchestral colours in parts of the Chopin Scherzos- for example the shimmering high notes above the chorale like melody in the Third Scherzo, and the lyric middle sections of the First & Fourth.I began studying the piano at the age of 5, but it wasn't until I read Music at Oxford University that I began orchestrating music- as an optional part of my degree course. During this time, I also conducted the orchestra at my college, St Hugh's, and for one of our concerts I orchestrated two of the Marches Militaires by Schubert (I had been playing them in their original duet form with a friend, and was convinced that they would transfer well to the orchestra). So tracks 7 and 8 of this album, the Marches in D and G, were premiered at St Hugh's in 1995! The instrumentation was slightly different then- we had 4 clarinets, only one horn and one trombone. The version on the album has been revised to the more traditional double wind. The third march in E Flat was not added to complete the set until 2008.