[Duration 30 minutes. There is also a Composer's Edit lasting 15 minutes which might be more suitable for a programme.]

This piece is based upon Alban Berg's tone row from his Violin Concerto of 1935. The row is superbly constructed - an incredibly concise summary of the main tonal relationships available within Equal Temperament, and as soon as I saw this, having previously worked on the tone row from Stockhausen's Mantra, I felt I had to apply my own technique of pitch translation to it, to see where it led. I had some reservations about doing this...Alban Berg's piece is a heartfelt expression of his sorrow at the death of a young friend, and it was his last completed piece. I had no desire to re-write his music, or to alter people's perception of the original, and have a great sympathy for his experience having gone through something similar in my own life. Instead I thought of this as a chance to offer the violinist an after-life, a means of experiencing alternate realities which traverse a much wider range of moods than the original. So the piece begins in an appropriately serious mood using the original row and a closely related one, but then after only a minute or so the French Horn, piano and percussion open the door to the possibility of new worlds and the music embarks on a whirlwind journey. After nearly 90 separate ideas within 30 minutes we return, and transformed by the experience the piece ends with the violin ascending to the summit in a lightened mood. This ambitious project is something new and a step up for me - the obvious play on words in the title felt appropriate: Climbing a mountain, and the notion of ascending Parnassus are all linked in there somewhere. But most of all I was very pleased to discover the potential for so many memorable melodic patterns hidden within the formula of the Berg row. (© Jonathan Parry - Composed May 2023 to April 2024) Thanks to Mihnea Brumariu for the German translation of the title