Pian score 057156335X (fp), and piano score and parts 0571563341 (fp) on sale

Although Adagissimo is short (lasting about eight minutes) it is built from numerous tiny inventions. The piece opens with slow, spare gestures passed gently back and forth between piano and strings. Next comes a series of sharply intercut images: spindly, toyshop mechanisms, wild folk dances flowering for seconds before being snuffed out, and a repeated slow, tender fall into darkness. The penultimate music is a scurrying recollection of my clarinet trio, A Farewell, which leads to a slow, bleached canon, marked 'Adagissimo'.

© JW