As the scent of spring rain... comes from a translation of the evocative first line of a love poem by Israeli poet Leah Goldberg. The poem itself was introduced to me by a good friend of mine a number of years ago, and I have a strong memory of how much the beauty of the original Hebrew and the imagery in her translation touched me. Because of that I deliberately did not work from the poem itself but only from my memory of it, which was so special to me that I didn?ft want to disturb it with a re-reading which would create a new and different experience. As a result, the harmonic language, structure, and orchestration all aim to conjure the intense juxtaposition of sweetness and sadness which I most remember from the poem.