Test Piece Preview: Star Crossed Lovers by Stephen Roberts

Inside the Score of the 2025 British Open Set Work

Stephen Roberts’ latest work, Star Crossed Lovers will make its world premiere at the 2025 British Open on Saturday 6th September 2025. Ahead of the competition, I’ve taken a deeper look at the score and the information the composer has shared to get a taste of what to expect from this weekend’s performances.

So, if you fancy diving into Star Crossed Lovers with me - shall we depart to fair Verona?

About the Composer and Commission

Stephen Roberts is a London-born composer, arranger, French horn player, conductor and pedagogue. He’s no stranger to the British Open stage with Star Crossed Lovers, being his fourth work featured at this competition.

The work was commissioned for the 171st British Open, by the Mortimer family, who own and run the contest. Karyn Mortimer, a former ballet dancer, wished for a piece based on Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet score. As with Roberts’ early open works (Reflections on Swan Lake and Arabian Nights), Star Crossed Lovers blends key motifs from the original score with Roberts’ own writing to form a new work.

Explore the British Open works of Stephen Roberts

Musical DNA: Themes and Motifs

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the score, it’s worth meeting the main motifs that form the musical DNA of this work.

In his explainer video, Roberts notes that Prokofiev takes parts of the love theme and uses them throughout his ballet score in different ways to represent a variety of moods and events. In a similar way, Roberts has taken key themes from Prokofiev’s score and used them throughout the work to represent, in his words ‘the opposing passions of good and evil, love and hate’.

Main Theme and Love Theme

First heard in exposed cadenzas for solo cornet and euphonium and then scattered throughout the piece before forming the basis for the last section and coda. When used softly, it is a little spark of tentative love and when used boldly it’s a sweeping, sonorous declaration.

Hate Themes

Drawn from Montagues and Capulets - angular, brash and instantly recognisable.

Juliet’s Themes

The first is lyrical and is used to try and dissolve conflict. The second motif is more playful with a nimble, ascending figure and an innocent, feminine energy.

Mercutio’s Theme

Fast-paced, fleeting and chaotic - this descends into conflict when he duels Tybalt and loses his life (spoiler alert - though, can it be a spoiler if the story is over 400 years old?)

Star Crossed Lovers: The Story Within the Score

The piece plays out in 8 sections.

Now, I’ve gone through the score and noted where I think the 8 main sections are, as there are some smaller sections within the work that I think are transitional or make up the main sections, so I’ll be interested to see how this plays out at the weekend!

Note: the ‘titles’ I’ve given each section are not in the score - they’re just to summarise the subject for each section.

Section 1: Opening

The opening is a slow but imposing affair with bold, dissonant chords that crescendo to a triple forte pause, before thinning to hushed writing for horns, flugel, solo baritone, euphonium, Eb bass and timp.

Here we encounter the first cadenzas of the piece - a duet for solo cornet and euphonium who introduce the ‘love theme’. It’s painfully exposed with top Ds at a piano dynamic and only minimal support from Eb bass, bass drum and timpani. Short baritone and bass duets follow, before we descend into the next section.

Section 2: Introduction of Hate

From the delicate love theme we are thrown into the recognisable melody from Montagues and Capulets. With the dynamic rarely dipping below forte, this is one of many stamina-zapping sections within this work - it’s a bit of a marathon.

The first hate motif is split between players - particularly between the pairs of euphoniums and baritones - before the second motif briefly emerges in trombones, euphs and basses. The section closes with a bar of contrary motion: cornets and sop ascending and horns and baritones descending, whilst the lower end of the band sustains a pedal before a final accented thud of a chord ends this section.

Section 3: Juliet

The flugel introduces Juliet’s first theme: lyrical, placating, seeking to calm the preceding fray. Horns and baritone then present a modified version of the main theme, before a lightly scored passage for repiano, flugel, baritone and soprano cornet take over.

At the Vivace, Juliet’s dance begins and we hear the second of her motifs that’s playful and energetic with a naive ‘girlish’ charm, built from ascending semiquavers ending in a little wink of a cadence. In his explanation video, Roberts says that this section has to be ‘played with great precision and accuracy’ in order to bring our protagonist to life.

Section 4: Mercutio

Juliet’s dance is interrupted by Mercutio’s fleeting, mischievous theme in the lower brass. With such a fast paced, detailed motif in such a low register, the clarity of this section could be a test here. Balancing delivering another dynamically heavy section, whilst reserving stamina (as we’re not even half way through the piece) will also be a challenge.

Once we’ve become well acquainted with our little jokester, we see him provoke the wrong person - Tybalt. This results in a duel, musically illustrated with rapid semi and demisemiquavers tossed between upper and lower band, as the two characters parry and lunge.

We enter a whirl of chromatic sextuplets accompanied by long, warning chords both above and below the technical tornado, before Tybalt delivers the final blow. Mercutio attempts to play off his demise, shown through a juxtaposition of a melancholy minor melody set in playful staccato rhythms. Eventually a funereal bass drum and lower brass rumble represent his life draining away.

Cheery stuff.

Whilst Mercutio is taking his last breaths, the soloists featured in the next section quietly take up their positions offstage…

Section 5: Reflective Cadenzas and Lament

An offstage quintet of cornet, flugel, horn, baritone and trombone act as a (in the composer’s words) Greek chorus - reflecting on the events that have just occurred. Their unmeasured solos weave together like a conversation, ghostly and distant, echoing hate motifs in spectral fragments. It’ll be this bit where the audience, no doubt, rattles their packet of Werther’s Originals or ends up having a coughing fit.

Onstage, a sombre euphonium cadenza reflects on the hate theme before bursting in an acrobatic, virtuosic display of technical dexterity. A second euphonium joins, forming a duet that sores into ledger-line heights (top E for solo euphonium) before plunging down into the depths of their range to usher in the lament, which, again, focuses on the hate theme.

Section 6: Romeo’s Rage

Grief erupts into rage, as we’re thrust into a presto storm of venomous semiquavers that race around the stand, punctuated by wailing glissandi from cornets and xylophone.

Finding the vertical line in this section will be key in order to knit together the four separate sections within the texture:

• staccato, accented semiquaver passages

• metronomic, staccato quavers

• off-beat quavers

• on-beat quavers

This isn’t helped with a dynamic of forte pretty much around the stand - bringing out the detail within such a thick texture and strong dynamic could be a challenge.

The chaos builds and builds until the music crashes back into the opening dissonance.

Section 7: Montagues and Capulets

The hate theme returns in full force - with the whole theme from Montagues and Capulets on display.

Out of all the sections, this is one of the least technically difficult - but that doesn’t make it easy. As a player - this would be my danger zone in terms of concentration, fighting fatigue and rationing stamina, so I can give it my all at the end.

Extended sections of loud dynamics make this a musical marathon and the ending packs a large, relentless dynamic punch. By this point, we’re not far from the home stretch, it’s one of the less technical moments and the most recognisable part of the piece, so,I think this could potentially be the ‘risk zone’ for fatigue and concentration and this could potentially be the section that separates the top results from the rest.

Section 8: Final Solos and Love Theme

This is a work that doesn’t half put the soloists in the band through their paces, with another round of solos, this time based on the love theme, at the end of a hefty piece. Again, I anticipate the accidental accompaniment of sweet wrappers and sneezing.

The band builds into full force with the last triumphant formation of the love theme.

At last, love wins out - but it doesn’t do it quietly! The piece closes with a short, emphatic coda ending on a triple forte chord just to wring every last drop of energy from the band. For those who nail it, I anticipate this chord being drowned out by applause.