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Piani, Latebre

This set of three large pieces for piano was commissioned by William Howard for the 2010 Spitalfields Festival in London, with funds provided by Landmark Chambers. My fourth work for solo piano, this is also my second solo collaboration with William Howard, who commissioned the five-movement set Das Leonora Notenbuch from me in 1988. Comparison between the structures of the two works shows the deepening of a 20-year preoccupation with the narrative of multi-movement form, a theme that is also discussed in other accompanying statements.

The three pieces of Piani, Latebre form an experimental narrative, since, while related and intended as sequential, they can still be played in any order. The aim, part of a wider research into dramatic narrative previously explored inter al in two string quartets of experimental layout (The Still Dancers, 1992 and Driftwood On Sand, 2001), is to allow one work to present multiple narrative possibilities - since the three pieces (subtitled Ballade, Impromptu and Etude) are highly contrasted in expression.

To my pleasure each of the three pianists who have so far interpreted the work in concert – William Howard, Richard Casey and Clare Hammond – has independently chosen a different running order as being ‘natural’, without knowing of the others; in that way the work has followed different narrative courses for different audiences, with its next performance (by a fourth interpreter) due in 2013 in Toronto.

The other research strand is to unite the pieces with three pianistic archetypes: the tremolo, the scalic run and a melody-and-bass harmonic skeleton (Escalator Series, outlined for my Agricolas). Each piece is built upon two of these three, which thus recur in varied forms and combinations; a short introduction (preceding the pieces in whichever order they occur) presents these three elements in miniature.