Handwork

Description

Piano 1, Piano 2 — Handwork is many things - a dreamy fantasia, a nocturne, a folk-song, a Latin-American dance with much prominent counterpoint and poly-metric intrigue. Handwork is sometimes tonal with crunchy Prokofiev-like dissonances. There are obvious Bartókian octatonic passages in the development, followed by a Persian free-rhythm Santur variation. A dream-like fragment of a Beethoven minuet briefly appears. The work concludes with a re-statement of the opening subject in it's simple, enigmatic ambiguity. Commissioned on behalf of The Viney Grinberg Duo (Liam Viney and Anna Grinberg) by the University of Queensland School of Music and the Creative Collaboratorium, Handwork was premiered at UQ in August 2015, shortly before its U.S. premiere at Yale School of Music the following month by the Duo (both of whom are YSM alumni). Bresnick points to the multi-faceted aspect of Handwork, including "a dreamy fantasia, a nocturne, a folk-song, a Latin-American dance with much prominent counterpoint and poly-metric intrigue."