Piano Solo / 22′ / Difficulty: Medium-Hard / 2024
Late February 2024, a dear friend of mine gave a masterful performance, and upon congratulating him afterwards, I joked with him that I should write a piece for him. In an all serious tone, he looked at me straight and said, ‘do it’. Well, here is that piece; a fully developed piano sonata.
Movement I: Allegro con brio. Featuring a brisk melody in 7/8, the introduction introduces the nature of the work with its lilting phrases and sweeping arpeggios. To break from tradition, while the movement normally in a piano sonata is in sonata-allegro form, this movement only encapsulates the exposition – the development and recapitulation are reserved for the 4th movement.
Movement II: Adagio Maestoso. Written in the relative minor, f, this movement showcases the brilliance of the pianist, with 3:2 and 4:3 rhythms used in the A and B sections, respectively. The melody opens up to take advantage of the entire length of the piano in the B theme, with swift flourishes to round out the line. The ternary form finishes out with a brewing lyrical left-hand motif.
Movement III: Scherzando. Written as a dance in Ab, this simple motif looks easy on the page, but a few pages later, and the dexterity of the pianist is shown off in grandiose ways, with leaping figures and delicate scale work. The B section of the binary form features some modern harmony, borrowing from jazz and Neo-classical ideas.
Movement IV: Andante cantabile. Picking up where the first movement left off, the last movement expands the material from the opening with an even wider harmonic palette. The development section is a fugue – where the different themes heard through the first three movements all make an an appearance and wind around each other. It’s not a normal fugue, however – it is in 7/8, just like the opening theme. The sonata closes with the exposition, now firmly rooted in the home key, ending right in the place where the journey began – just twenty-two minutes later.