À deux mains (1995)
(Impromptu for piano)

Perhaps my innate doubt as to whether the concept of musical improvisation can ever be realized in such a way that one can actually speak of improvised music was also a reason for composing this piece. Apparently, my intellectual affinity to the pure doctrine of improvisation - if it existed at all - often leads me to deal with forms that find their justified completion in the creation of musical impromptu.

Thus the impromptu is an example of that still-living genre in which an attempt was made to narrow down the arbitrary emergence of music into a thematic riverbed in order to make it even more changeable and complex. The transformation of the moment seems particularly important to me, because it can lead to an emphasis on the unforeseen, to surprising twists and turns. The foil of spontaneity thus becomes more credible for the listener.

À deux mains, commissioned by the Secondo Concorso Pianistico Internazionale Umberto Micheli, Milan, is my first veritable morceau de concours. I hope that the pianists who perform the piece play as precisely as they do whimsically, as exuberantly as they do glassily, as if this music were only flowing through their fingers at this very moment, unexpectedly and presently: in promptu.

M.K.
(Translation by Edition Peters)