27
Festival
programme
Carl Vine (born 1954)
Piano sonata No.2
in two movements
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Michael Kieran Harvey (Piano)
1.00pm PErC TuCKEr rEGiONAL GALLErY
Free Lunchtime series Public Masterclass
See Special Events page 55
1.00pm TOwNsviLLE CiTY LiBrArY
Up Close and Personal with the Artists
See Special Events page 57
5.30pm TOwNsviLLE CiviC THEATrE
sunset series French Plus One
Camille Saint-Saëns
Tarantelle
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Vernon Hill (Flute)
»
Julian Farrell (Clarinet)
»
Kathron Sturrock (Piano)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Theme and variations
Thème: Modéré
Modéré
Un peu moins modéré
Modéré, avec éclat
The composer writes:
My first Piano Sonata and Piano Concerto were both written for, dedicated to and
premiered by Michael Kieran Harvey. Since 1991 Harvey has presented the Piano
Sonata around the globe, and won the Ivo Pogorelich International Piano Competition
while playing that work.
Following the premiere of the Piano Concerto in 1997, Michael asked me to write a
second sonata, to be premiered at the 1998 Sydney Festival. I wanted the new work
to have a far more solid structure than the first sonata, which evolves organically
over its entire span.
After a declamatory introduction, the first movement is in two clear halves. The first
relies on a perpetually roving left hand part over which a variety of gestural material
is developed. The second is a slowly repeating `ground bass' which accompanies
bell-like sonorities and free-form melody in the right hand.
The second movement features fast motoric rhythms with a strong jazz influence and
jarring syncopations. The centre of the movement drops suddenly to half tempo to explore
the `dreamier' side of the same material before returning with a climactic recapitulation.
Piano Sonata No.2 was commissioned by Graeme and Margaret Lee, Michael Kieran
Harvey, and the Sydney Festival.
Saint-Saëns' charming little Tarantelle dates from 1857, about the time when Berlioz
famously quipped that `he knows everything but lacks inexperience'. The dance
from which the work takes its title refers to the town of Taranto in southern Italy: its
inexhaustible 6/8 metre is often associated with traditional courtship ritual. It is not,
contrary to popular opinion, a cure for the bite of the tarantula.
Messiaen wrote only three works for violin and piano (apart, of course, from seraphic
last movement of the Quartet for the end of time). The Theme and Variations is
contemporary with his major work of this time, L'Ascension, but more particularly,
was composed in 1932 as a wedding present for Messiaen's wife, the violinist and
composer Claire Delbos. `Mi', as Messiaen called her, was also the dedicatee of
his Fantaisie for violin and piano, and the song cycle Poèmes pour Mi. The theme
of this work is disarmingly simple, though the lush harmony and chromatic turns
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