I love variations. My favourite piece of Brahms are the Haydn Variations for Orchestra, my favourite piece by Elgar the Enigma Variations. When the Ensemble Pipelife asked me in September 2013 to contribute something to their British programme called The Silver Swan I surfed on Youtube (looking for Irish recorder) and found a young Irishman who played three old Irish tunes on his soprano recorder. The second tune fascinated me right away and I had the idea of writing the variations about it. Wha...