Professor of orchestration at the Royal Academy of Music and teacher at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Òscar Colomina i Bosch is a sought-after composer and conductor. He was a member of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra (performing with Carlo Maria Giulini and Gianandrea Noseda) before pursuing composition studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Royal Academy of Music with Malcolm Singer and Simon Bainbridge. Òscar’s commissions and performances include the Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, and Harrogate festivals, Philharmonia Orchestra, Schubert Ensemble, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Real Filharmonia de Galicia; concert venues across the UK, U.S.A., Spain, Portugal, France, Denmark, and Italy, including Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, and Yale and New York universities among them. His orchestration credits include Heinrich Schiff and the Kremerata Baltica. As a conductor, he was Principal Conductor of the City of Salamanca Youth Orchestra (Spain), collaborating with the CreArt Ensemble, Orpheus Sinfonia and Conservatorio Superior de Castilla y León. Recent conducting engagements include the 36th Pau Casals International Festival and the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague – School for Young Talent.

The composer has provided the following note for Shpigl:

Shpigl (mirror in Yiddish) was commissioned by the 2016 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition with support from the Britten-Pears Foundation. The piece weaves together a number of threads, the most fundamental being Menuhin’s perception of life as a journey of transformation and his vision that “the individual must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product.” These inspired me to use movement in space and to allow the performers greater choice shaping their individual journey through the material. I also introduced veiled memories of works that were very significant to Menuhin’s own journey: the opening four notes of Elgar’s Violin Concerto, the intervals and rhythmic impulse from Bartók’s solo Sonata, the turning chromaticism of Enescu’s Sonata No. 3, and Kreisler’s cadenza to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.