DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS
"The nature of Sebastian Currier’s piano music - ebullient, choreographic and wonderfully inventive - announces itself from the first measures of the 1988 Piano Sonata that opens this beguiling disc. The writing is densely packed into the keyboard, but crisp melodic themes and rhythmic interplay register clearly through the busy textures. And the more you listen, the more engrossing the effect becomes. In a series of splendid performances, pianist Laura Melton brings out all the rambunctious finesse of the five-movement sonata and the thoughtful, intricately cross-referenced "Departures and Arrivals." Currier deftly walks a line between dry neo-Classicism and a more explosively messy emotional palette, and Melton traces it well. The disc concludes in a burst of witty high spirits, with "Scarlatti Cadences" - pressing the old master's distinctive formulas into service in new ways - and the hyperactive "Brainstorm." -San Francisco Chronicle |
Program Note
There's a feeling I have when writing music that whenever I make a choice about something, even if relatively small, that had I chosen differently, I would have sent the piece off in another direction: the piece I finally write is the path I cut through this virtual forest of alternatives. "Departures and Arrivals" mirrors this process. Each of the six movements is an alternative path that starts with the same beginning material. In this way, one could think of "Departures and Arrivals" not so much as six independent movements, but as six alternate versions of the same piece. In the first three pieces (a tune, a shift, a dialogue) this is quite literal: all start the same way (or nearly the same), but then branch off in different directions. In the following three pieces (a transformation, a reconfiguration, a glimpse) this process is somewhat abstracted: in these instances the beginning material is either transformed or repositioned - but again, this is like the actual process of composing where the first idea one thinks of is not necessarily the first idea one ultimately hears. |
Scoring
for piano
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes for the world.
for piano
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes for the world.