after Beethoven 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli Op. 120

 

Each of the ten parts making up this sonata began as an improvisation on a pattern derived from a moment (often no more than a bar) of Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120. In the spirit of the variation form, I was interested in transforming the patterns under my fingers, while also drawing disparate starting points into a common nocturnal atmosphere.

 

Each part belongs to and illuminates the others; there are explicit recollections (for example, of part III in parts VII and X), but also recurring sound images continually refreshed, such as patterns often reaching or grasping, cascades like sudden vistas of light, and sonorities grounded in major/minor seconds. Direct allusions to the Beethoven surface like an iceberg, but mostly they are partially dissolved, coiling and uncoiling, altering, aqueous, lightening.

 

This music is for Cédric Tiberghien.

 

LI