Category:
Chamber Music
In ever new life cycles the human soul perfects itself.... And each new life is a cycle of its own, like the Yin & Yang... Good and evil, light and dark are in constant change. In the piano piece, this contrast is huge - frantic haste in the Toccata and motionless stillness in the Adagio... You have to be able to endure it.
Movements: 1.Toccata Primavera
2: Adagio 'The Art of Quietness' (a ZEN-Exercise)
Duration: 9 minutes
Publisher of notes/sheet music: Schott Music
, 2009
Instrumentation: Solo Piano
Solo instruments: Klavier
Introduction: Both pieces are each roughly 5 minutes long. TOCCATA is of course playable by one person but has extreme opposition which can be used in piano programs to create a intersting piece. It conveys stunning spring feeling with and a touch of yearniong poetry. It is the music of youth.
Adagio "The Art of Quietness" is a Zen exercise for the piano. Eternity, timelessness and the depletion of will are evoked and there is a violence, like the threat of silence, in the ritualistic symmetry ( the tempo of a quarter = 60 has to be maintained throughout). It is the music of Ending and of Age: the excerpts (from Wagner, Tristanakkord, Beethoven, Les Adieux and R. Strauss and Till Eulenspiegel) are nostalgic memories of the past.
Dedication: TOCCATA: dearly dedicated to Dr. Peter Hanser-Strecker, my publisher
Additional remarks: Toccata was created as a commission for the Wiesbaden Music Academy´s piano competition, directed by Christoph Nielbock.
World premiere:
10.11.2009, Chiesa della Gancia Palermo/Italy
Performers at world premiere: Jürgen Geiger
The world premiere of Toccata Primavera was on the 4th of October 2009 in the City Hall in Wiesbaden as part of the prize giving concert at the 4th Wiesbaden International Piano Competition with Konstantin Semelakov (1 Prize) and Patricia Hase ( 2 Prize). There was a €2500 prize for the best interpretation of Toccata.
