Steps Volume I - piano solo - 2001-2006
programme notes (audio/video/score on following pages)
Trois Petits Adieux (dur. 7mins) were composed in 2001 as a parting gift for a talented pupil. Written somewhat in the tradition of Nineteenth Century pieces For the Young, approachable yet not patronising, each was inspired by a poem of the American visionary Emily Dickinson. The first is a song, the second playfully capricious, and the third paints a bleaker landscape with delicate ghostly echoes'.
Split The Lark... (dur. 7mins) shares the same starting point, and was written concurrently with the shorter pieces above. It is dedicated to a good friend, Michael Bell. The Dickinson poem speaks of how once the "shell'" is cracked the musical essence concealed within is discovered and comes flooding out, as indeed did this music, composed after a 12 year silence. There are two sections: it begins in arabesque-like mood, lilting and melancholy, with an insistant tonic-subdominant harmonic movement. However, this is within a rhythmic world of constantly changing, subtle irregularities. A declamatory climax is reached, followed by a brief recapitulation. The piece concludes with a shorter postlude, gently 'pulsing', and using some of the earlier material, but unravelling all the while, as if the dream goes wrong - finally, the "discovered" music fades.
Still (dur. 6mins) is a barcarolle like miniature, written in 2002 as one of a pair. The piece was inspired by a funeral procession of gondolas witnessed in Venice, with (Berlioz-like) "the beloved" carried away on a sea of silent rocking. There is an "imposed stillness", a sultry harmonic world, which barely contains the tumult hidden beneath the surface. Just once this breaks out before the repressive control is one again seemingly gained.
The Little White Girl dur. 4½mins)is the foil to the above and written in 2002 as a response to a poem by Swinburne called Before The Mirror'. He in turn had appended this to a painting by Whistler, The Little White Girl II, depicting the (perhaps not so young) girl questioning her rather more mature reflection. This counterpoise of the innocent and the half-knowing is reflected in two types of music in this short piece. The first unsettled, sometimes passionately so, contrasting with delicate sections, with characteristic use of quintuplets. Towards the end "the heart" is allowed to dance for a brief moment before the simplicity returns.
Over The Ocean (dur. 6mins) is the first of a number of piano pieces from 2003, The title is a vague pun on Seabourne, and is a monumental-sounding piece. Heavy masculine chords, almost like 2-piano writing, alternate with tender, simpler music. The piece has a sense of sea journey, of casting out towards the unreachable horizon. (Also see video at foot of main piano page.)
Little Scene (dur. 4½mins), also from 2003, shares the sound world of the pieces above, as well as a common "tonality" and melodic conour. Gentle yearning predominates and blossoms into mutlilayered rhythmic arabesque.
Awake! (dur. 3½mins), whilst certainly not a "process" piece, nevertheless has a certain "working out" quality. Ideas derived from the numbers 15 and 12 are expanded to create a stuttering, perhaps manic, scherzo-like movement, with overtones of improvisation and syncopation. There is a feeling of Spring - the birth dance of Persephone, anew.
The Sun - just touched the Morning! (dur. 4mins) was the first of two shorter pieces written in May/June 2003. Lyrical and song-like, it moves with a free rubato and an intense melancholic air. Its source is, once again, EmilyDickinson - "Morning" is touched by "the Sun", thinking it is there to stay, but its visit is merely passing, leaving but a dimmer glow behind. (also see video at foot of main piano page.)
Greeting! (dur. 2½mins) acts as an album leaf to Volume 1. A simple, innocent, bright, dancing little piece, as befits the breaking of a long silence - a moment of naïve, joyful release!
In Winter (dur. 10mins),
Im Windesweben
An Baches Ranft
Winter Landscape with Rocks
Noch zwingt mich treue
The Lark in Winter
The Rose in Winter
This little set of pieces was composed within relatively simple technical limits so as to be approachable by a younger or amateur player. Miniature landscapes, four take their leads from poems (by Stefan George, and Sylvia Plath) - the last two reconnect with previous musical personae.
Suspended Journeys (dur. 4mins)
I. 19 - II. Black - III. A Touch
Dating from 2003-4, this set tries to combine the idea of forward movement with a paradoxical sense of stasis - journeys that have become becalmed as they each tread something of a wheel.
19 has an element of primal surge (as befits its partial inspiration - Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus Bk1 no.19). It wells its way up from the depths, using the E flat and A tritone as harmonic generator, striving towards something that it will one day be, and yet already is. The rhythm is driving and obssessive, but grace and radiance cohabit with drama and dynamism. Black is an extended nocturne-like piece. This night journey rocks only slowly forward - perhaps a return vision of the funeral gondola of Still. A Touch is a toccata, employing much change of accent and metre; full of energy but nevertheless struggling to escape the same harmonic pre-occupations as the other pieces.
El Suspiro del Moro (dur. 12mins) was inspired, as so many pieces have been, by the magical achitecture and history of Granada. Its title stems from the legend of King Boabdil, the last Moorish king, who on being ousted by the Christian reconquerors is said to have looked back from a distant hill over his beloved, now lost city and sighed (indeed wept - his wife mercilessly chiding him, the while!). My piece is a lament, with bitter, melancholy, reflective, passionate, trance-like dancing twists. It is dedicated to the young Croatian pianist Ivana Vidovic with the première originally planned for the Festival Iberica in Brno in August 2007 - [addendum: sadly this festival was "postponed" and the piece has never, to my knowledge, been played].
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