+ | Program Notes |
Impromptus (2015-2016)
Music by Samuel Adams
Commissioned by Music Accord Inc. for Emanuel Ax
Scored for solo piano
I) 10.17.2017
II) after Schubert
III) After My Very Young Life
I created these three pieces with the intention that they would be performed as links between each of the Four Impromptus D 935 by Franz Schubert. I imagine they could also be performed on their own—in any order or perhaps individually—but for now they exist as works whose forms and harmonic structures serve a larger seven-movement arch.
The process of writing the pieces was a terrific excuse to reacquaint myself with Schubert's crystalline works (I used to play the Impromptus as a young pianist) and to re-discover their clarity, patience, and resonance.
The music I created aims to assume a similar posture. Each impromptu is carefully constructed but rooted in a simple impulse: the first, a kind of graphed organism made from the DNA of Impromptus nos. 3 and 4 D 899; the second, a symmetrical ABA form with material lifted from American folk music and the Sonata in B-flat major D 960; the third, an introduction and thirty-one repetitions of an unsourced cadence.
I began sketching these works in the fall of 2015 and completed nos. II and III the following winter. I completed no. I in July, 2016. Sincerest thanks to Emanuel Ax for this wonderful opportunity. - Samuel Carl Adams
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Composer: Samuel Carl Adams
Instrumentation: solo piano
Premiering Artists: Emanuel Ax, piano
Duration:
Publisher Contact
http://www.samuelcarladams.com/
Artist Contact
http://www.opus3artists.com/artists/emanuel-ax
Samuel Carl Adams
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Emanuel Ax
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