Timmy's Adventures in Dingleland

Okay so here's my first kind of 'major' piece I've written for my degree. It'll be performed by a professional ensemble in May, and I'm sending off the score this week.
The brief was to write a piece of maximum length 12 minutes, for an ensemble of maximum size flute/clarinet/perc/2 violins/viola/cello/bass. After a bit of agonizing over what on earth I would do, I did what usually works for me and just sat down and put some notes out to see what happened, and then went from there.

The piece is kind of loosely following around a character as he explores a world. I haven't put too much more thought into the precise story than that, except that the first movement is introducing the character, and the second and third are two little adventures of his, with the third ending in his triumphant return. I kept a fairly light tone throughout, which seems to be a common thread for all my compositions. Some of my tutor's suggestions that I put in were expanding the first movement slightly, experimenting with string harmonics, and just some general score tidying. He liked the ending and I do too - his comment was that it sounded like something a composer might have written a hundred or so years ago, but in a good way.

The piece is fairly tonal, almost to a fault at times, so mostly my concerns were with trying to keep it as fresh and interesting as I could, in my own ways. Mainly, that involves trying to vary up my chord progressions and harmonies. I had particular fun towards the end of the second movement where I literally was just putting in whatever I felt like in the strings.

The title has no significance whatsoever, except that I wanted it to evoke something childlike and innocent. I originally had 'Tinky-Winky' instead of 'Timmy' but my tutor thought that was going too far, and it would seem like I was going for a jokey piece, which was not quite my intention.

Recording is a slightly dodgy/quirky/stuttery Sibelius output but it's mostly okay.

Nice piece! 

I could definitely hear what was happening as far as the story you described goes. I think this would be very much enjoyed by an audience if they had a program note describing what was going on in the story. Very modern, but with a touch of what I guess could be called "old world" music...I don't know how to describe what I mean by that but hopefully you get the picture. 

Good job!

Thank you! Yeah, I guess my style often tends to be of the 'old world' music but with my own style of additions/changes. I'm happy with that.

It got performed last week by members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, here's the recording!

Wow, congrats! This is a wonderful piece, and the orchestra did it so well...

I love it!

There's good unity and contrast between the movements.

The overall tone is whimsical, but it gets sensuous and explorative in II, and strange and foreboding in III.

That's really awesome! It's remember me Stravinsky's Story of a soldier somehow and I don't know why exactly. 

Congrats!