Piano Sonata No. 1

Description

Piano — The First Piano Sonata Op.1 is the first composition to survive the self-critical annihilation of my early works.xa0 (The rest of my juvenilia was destroyed in order to prevent future musicologists from dragging these fetal skeletons, kicking and screaming, from my musical closet).xa0 It was completed in 1977 when I was 15 years old and premiered the following year at Carnegie Recital Hall by the nervous young composer.xa0 It was later dedicated to Stephen Hough, who gave the work its first European performances.The Sonata is a formally terse work in four short movements.xa0 The first, Adagio, utilizes fugal elements and chromatic harmony in an abbreviated sonata-allegro form.xa0 The second movement, Presto, is a fiendishly difficult little Scherzo whose finger-twisting intricacies provide real terrors for the pianist.xa0 The third movement is a lyrical Lento built out of repetitions of melodic fragments, bell-like sonorities, and a central ostinato section.xa0 The final movement follows attacca: a violent Presto with changing meters, and a more playful secondary theme.The First Piano Sonata has been recorded by David Korevaar for Musical Heritage Society and by Margaret Mills on the Cambria label.