The one feature of this concerto that has genuinely resisted explanation is that the second movement runs to precisely the same length as the first. Not approximately, not near enough for programme notes—to the sample.

Dr. Trevelyan-Boake holds this to be a mirror set deliberately at the heart of the work, and has built upon it a reading of the whole concerto as a structure folded about its own second movement. It is the most admired chapter she has written. The composer, shown it, said that he had not noticed, and then asked whether it was a problem.

Whether the movement is answering the first or merely standing where it can be compared to it is a question the literature has declined to settle, on the sensible grounds that settling it would end the literature.

Back to Xylophone Concerto #2.