Steps Volume 6: Toccatas and Fantasias - piano solo - duration c 46 minutes - 2017

This cycle was written in response to a request from a dear friend and champion of longstanding, the great virtuoso Konstantin Lifschitz. He had already given a selection of Steps Volume 2 in Germany and Armenia. Konstantin asked for a work to accompany the early toccatas of J.S. Bach, possibly to be interleaved with them. My sequence alternates (predominantly) six multi-sectional toccatas in that manner, interspersed with five more monothematic, introspectively poetic fantasias. Neither uses material from the Bach but there are more generically Baroque figurations (without being in any way Pulcinella-like - this is not "Back to Bach"). The set concludes with a set of variations, perhaps a miniature Goldberg. Its sarabande-like theme ends a semitone higher in "key" than it begins, so over the course of the following variations it eventually returns to the opening pitch in an extended and tumultous final section.

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