Output details

Runswick- The Scafra Preludes. CD recording of music for piano. Aleksander Szram (piano).

This is the first CD recording of the Scafra Preludes by Daryl Runswick, and as such brings the work to an audience for the first time. It continues my research imperative as a performer to create composer-supervised interpretations of hitherto unrecorded contemporaneous works. Guided and produced by the composer, this recording constitutes a rigorous, idealised realisation of the score, and locates itself in relation to other composer-supervised documents such as Stockhausen/Henck, Cage/Tudor, Messiaen/Loriod. My role in the project was to discover pianistic solutions to the various problems created by the notational and compositional systems used by Runswick, in order to show other performers how these pieces can be successfully realized. This involved issues of micro-timing in Prelude 4, the interpretation of dot-music realisation in Prelude 9 and the simultaneous juxtaposition of proportional and strict tempo structures in Prelude 10. Runswick’s abhorrence of rubato, a view presented in his publication The Improvisation Continuum, necessitated an idiosyncratic approach to the communication of the scafra structures. Runswick views this composition as his most important work, (his compositional manifesto,) the opus that sets-out his mature views on musical structure, and exhibits his personal approach to providing balance between old and new material within a piece. This is thus an important document concerning Runswick’s legacy as a composer. Further information on the scafra process can be found at http://www.darylrunswick.net/article.html. This research project has led to new insights concerning how the repetition of musical material can be structured, and its findings have been presented at lecture-recitals/workshops at the RAM, York University, and the University of British Columbia, as well as at concerts across the UK, France and Canada.