Verticals

Description

Piano — VERTICALS is a seventeen-minute solo piano work in one movement, which can be divided into several interlocking sections roughly suggesting an exposition/contrast/recapitulation/coda formal plan. All materials of the work, however, originate from the opening sonority - a vertical structure (chord) comprising eight notes (through containing only six of the twelve available tones of the chromatic scale). As the piece progresses, this vertical sonority serves also as a kind of structural signpost, helping delineate the larger formal blocks of the work.On quite another level, VERTICALS is also about piano playing. Though it quotes no past music and alludes to no "other styles" per se, parts of it are very much inspired by the pianistic style and textures, indeed by the sheer physical sensation experienced by the performer, of some of the music that has come to constitute he canon of the virtuoso pianoxa0 literature.