2 began when the English choreographer Christopher Wheeldon first approached MacMillan about expanding one of his compositions—1999's "Cumnock Fair" for string quintet—into a larger work fit for a ballet production.
MacMillan described revisiting the piece in the score program notes, writing:Cumnock Fair's original title was 'Hoodicraw Peden' who was Scotland's seventeenth century talibanesque covenanting 'hero' referred to in Edwin Muir's excoriating poem 'Scotland 1941'.
[1] The composition has a duration of roughly 30 minutes and is composed in three movements: The work is scored for solo piano and a string orchestra comprising first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses.
[2] Andrew Achenbach of Gramophone similarly lauded:Scored for piano and strings, it is in three movements, the first of which, "Cumnock Fair", initially appeared in 1999.
"Shambards" mockingly quotes the waltz from the Mad Scene in Lucia di Lammermoor while the lusty violin reel that launches "Shamnation" acquires an increasingly desperate energy as it hurtles giddily towards the piano's unhinged, unnerving final flourish.