Program Notes
For about the past ten years I have been composing, on and off, a number of pieces for solo piano, variously named preludes and bagatelles. This piece, Einklang, came out of that project, and started life in 2006 when I thought of expanding the collection to include a prelude for two pianos. I worked on the piece on and off for a while, until it became clear that it had grown beyond an entity that I felt could reasonably be described as either a prelude or bagatelle. I gave it a working title of “Sonata for Two Pianos”, but that really never felt like more than a placeholder as I continued to work on the piece.
What attracted me in particular to the medium of two pianos was the myriad of possible sonorities and contrapuntal textures that were simply not available on a single instrument. In particular I came to focus during the compositional process on exploring rhythmic unisons between the two instruments, and on some of the possible chords and lines that could be achieved with that technique. The work’s title Einklang, meaning variously unison, accord, concord, harmony, sympathy, grew out of this approach.