w7016
| Title | Piano Sonata No 3, Op 39 |
| Contributors |
John McLeod (composer) |
| Composition date | 1995 |
| Duration (mins) | 0 |
| Category | keyboard |
| Instrumentation | Pf |
| Commissioned by | University of Aberdeen with financial assistance from the SAC. |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | 07 02 1995 Murray McLachlan Aberdeen |
| Notes | To Murray McLachlan. |
| Programme Note | This work was commissioned by the University of Aberdeen with financial assistance from the Scottish Arts Council to mark the quincentenary celebrations of the University in 1995. It was given its first performance by Murray McLachlan who has since recorded the work on a complete CD of McLeod's piano music. With this Sonata John McLeod has produced a composition of remarkable power, exciting virtuosity and great emotional depth. The use of a quotation from Scotland's greatest Renaissance composer, Robert Carver, makes a particularly appropriate link with the origins of the commission and the composer's birthplace, and seems to lend to the work a perspective of timelessness - almost a universality - which deepens the musical experience. The sonata plays without a break but is cast in two balancing parts. The opening section, beginning with a chord based on A flat (a passing reference to Beethoven's Piano Sonata in Eflat Op 31 No3), uses a mosaic construcrtion sometimes employed by Tippett and Stravinsky. Gradually the perspective becomes clearer as a Tarantella assumes prominence. Virtuoso writing challenges the pianist as the full resonance and range of the piano is freely used in developments of considerable intensity. At the halfway point a slow bell-like section unfolds a quotation from the 'Dona Nobis Pacem' of Robert Carver's Missa L'Homme Arme. The music is very still and a calm settles, almost as though a far distant past is being recalled. The Carver theme is developed before the opening material reappears and is reworked showing many thematic interconnections. The sonata ends quietly in a coda which, while recalling the Carver theme, settles on a very low A flat - reminding us of the very first note of the work. The opening chord, which was somewhat enigmatic at its first appearance, is thus 'solved' in a final unison spreading over the whole keyboard. The frenetic anxieties of the opening movement are resolved and the virtuoso challenges finally stilled in this epilogue of telling piano resonance. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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