Modéré
Mouvement de Menuet
Animé
"After the collection Miroirs I composed a Sonatine", wrote Ravel in his 'Autobiographical Sketch' of 1930. Ravel was never forthcoming about his music but this note on the Sonatine is excessively curt - the piece deserves more. In fact, although completed in 1905, the same year as Miroirs, the piece was started as early as 1903 and is, therefore, the first work which Ravel wrote for piano after the revolutionary Jeux d'eau. If Jeux d'eau and Miroirs represent the impressionistic Ravel, the Sonatine is a foretaste of the neo-Classical Ravel of the later Tombeau de Couperin - not least in the Menuet second movement, perhaps the best known movement of the work since it is one of the few piano movements by Ravel that does not demand a virtuosic technique (the first and last movements are a different matter!) Like the early String Quartet, the Sonatine is a cyclic work with the opening melody hinted at in the Menuet (with the original falling fourth transformed into a rising fifth) and openly restated and integrated into the finale.
© Douglas Jarman
Canope (Bk 2/10)
Des pas sur la neige (Bk1/6)
Bruyères (Bk 2/5)
La danse de Puck (Bk 1/11)
La cathédrale engloutie (Bk 1/10)
Général Lavine - eccentric (Bk 2/6)
The two books of Préludes were written between 1910 and 1913 and are amongst the last of Debussy's works for solo piano - only the tiny Berceuse héroique and the two great books of studies followed. Although, by this time, Debussy had already been afflicted with the cancer that would eventually kill him, the Préludes show no sign of the pain that he was already suffering during the period when he was working on them and, if some of them remain amongst the best known of Debussy's piano works, they retain their freshness and their ability to surprise by their constant freshness and originality.
The six pieces to be played tonight come from both books and Debussy insisted that, in the printed score, the titles were printed at the end, and not at the head of each piece. The titles of three of the pieces - 'Footsteps in the snow' (Des pas sur la neige), 'Heath-land' (Bruyères) and 'The dance of Puck' (La danse de Puck), are self-explanatory. The titles of the other three merit further explanation.
Canope: the city of Canopus was an ancient Egyptian city on the Nile that gave its name to a kind of funerary urn distinguished by its simplicity and lack of decoration other than a representation of the head of the deceased. La cathédrale engloutie: according to legend the cathedral of Ys in Brittany, sunk beneath the waves as punishment for the impiety of the local population. Periodically the cathedral was said to rise from the waves as a reminder and a warning.
General Lavine - eccentric was a popular character with a limp and a grimace who performed on the stage of the Folies Bergères.
© Douglas Jarman
Messiaen wrote Catalogue d'oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds) between 1956 and 1958. The work, in its entirety, lasts two hours and forty-five minutes and is rarely performed complete. Each of the thirteen movements is named after a particular bird and illustrates the bird and its surroundings through the eyes of the composer. Le traquet stapazin (Black-eared Wheatear) is the fifth movement.
The picture is set at the end of June in Roussillon, on the Mediterranean coast of France near the border with Spain. Although named after the black-eared wheatear, the movement includes bird-song from eleven different species of bird which frequent the scene at various times of the day. The black-eared wheatear, the first bird to be heard after the opening bars have set the scene, has a harsh and abrupt call which is periodically heard throughout the day. Unusually, the title bird does not dominate the movement. Instead it is the spectacled warbler with whom the listener really becomes familiar. The spectacled warbler is painted as a happy bird and is defined by a major sixth chord and typical Messiaenic rhythms of constant value in irregular groupings. Time is defined by the rising and setting of the sun, for which Messiaen uses warm coloured chords of reds and oranges. At sunset and the end of the day, we hear the sea and a few distant, now familiar bird calls before the final song, a memory of the spectacled warbler.
© Kate Dixon
Broadly conceived in France in 1984 in the wake of a Master's thesis on birdsong, this sixteen-minute Sonata was long in the germination and was only written down in full in the summer of 2001. The intention was for it to be for Peter Lawson, who had given such superb performances of Towards Asávari, a chamber concerto I had written for him in 1978.
The work's linked movements -
Chant + chorale: désinvolte / airy
Heterophony: flottant / floating
Monody: voletant... / fluttering
et puis volant / flying
frénétique! / frantic!
agité / fitful
Chorale-variation 1: fléchissant / flexing
Chorale-variation 2: caressant / feelingly
Branle: volatil / flashing, fleeting
are a succession of six extended variations on the opening sounds - fragments of birdsong-like melody and a caressing chorale phrase, dropped into long silences. The structure of all the material, though never literally quoting birdsong, is modelled on it in cellular fashion and has a similar constant reference to focal pitches - notably high F-sharp and A, and a measured trill on middle E. This latter has an additional function as link between variations. The music is exploratory, almost improvisatory in spirit rather than goal-oriented. Nonetheless, it steadily grows in animation throughout, from a slow and suspended opening through to the final noisy dance, with a brief relaxation in Chorale-variation 2.
The Sonata is a tribute in friendship and deep affection to the composer and ornithologist David Lumsdaine, from whose music and free-ranging approach to composition I have learnt so much over nearly four decades. Why the French? ... because the seeds of the Sonata came floating in one morning in the Périgord while watching accipiter ventillis, the goshawk, ranging over a valley; the work's subtitle has always been the evocative and contextually appropriate French name for that magnificent bird: autour des palombes.
© Anthony Gilbert
These postcard pieces were written in Chicago in December of 2001. Each piece fits onto one side of A5 card and can be sent through the post as an actual postcard
.The pieces may be performed in any order. My intention is to write further postcard pieces from various locations that may be performed with this collection.
© Ian Vine
Basis was written in 2000 when Paul Clay was studying compostion at the RNCM under Anthony Gilbert and Paul Newland. It is the last in a series of four works which use visual grids to determine aspects of harmony and structure, inspired by the murals of Spanish artist Joan Miró (1893-1983), particularly 'Mural for Harvard University' (1960). The first three of the pieces in the series, all written in 1999, are: '...and then it passes' for string orchestra, '(this actually happened)' for string quartet and 'Phuz' for alto saxophone and chamber ensemble. Basis translates the harmonies and structures in these pieces and reinterprets them for piano.
The opening of the piece states a series of chords in a very slow-moving texture. The central section is fast and mechanical, in which patterns are rapidly set up and destroyed around a string of repeated notes. The gradually ascending material of this section becomes more chaotic until a melody is briefly stated and the repeated notes fall to the bass extreme of the piano. The texture gradually disperses towards the stillness of the final section in which the chords from the beginning return.
In an interview before the world premiere of '(this actually happened)' Paul cited his key influences at the time this set of works was written as: "Kandinsky, Miles Davis, Morton Feldman, Steve Martland, Paul Newland, Stravinsky, Allen Ginsburg and Sibelius". It is perhaps this unique collection of diverse sources of inspiration which contribute to the fresh style of this work.
© Kate Dixon
elements of pop-up was written in 2003 as a partner piece for my other piano piece, Basis, also premiered by Kate Dixon. Whereas Basis is in three distinct sections (slow-fast-slow), elements of pop-up is continuous; new material enters gradually then slowly overrides the old material. There are two main influences on the piece - the first a book on how to make pop-up books that I saw in a shop on Manchester's Oldham Street, the second the music of Astor Piazolla.
© Paul Clay