Piano Polyptych

This large-scale one-movement work presents a continuous series of late twentieth-century character pieces based on familiar musical or pianistic “situations”: cantilena, toccata, recitative, nocturne, canons and etude. 

Each piece appears either by simple succession of by metamorphosis of the previous one. Sometimes an earlier piece returns before the next one is introduced. At other times the work employs techniques first explored in my orchestral piece Focus and Fade of 1992, such that a new piece focuses as another fades, eventually producing two “decks” moving at different speeds. From this point on, the pianist is virtually always playing two pieces simultaneously until the streams converge back to the toccata and, finally, the opening cantilena. 

Piano Polyptych was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival with financial support from the Britten/Pears Foundation, and was written for Stephen Pruslin, who gave the first performance at the Aldeburgh Festival on 26 June 1993. 

Philip Grange