On 21 June George Benjamin and Pierre-Laurent Aimard premiered DIVISIONS for piano, four hands, at the Boulez Saal. The 14-minute work was commissioned by the Boulez Saal, the Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music in the Library of Congress, and Wigmore Hall. Aimard and the composer give further performances of the piece at Wigmore Hall on 3 November, the Library of Congress on 14 November and New York’s 92nd Street Y on 19 November.
A term used in 17th-century English keyboard music for a set of variations, the idea of the title DIVISIONS also applies to the physical separation of two players at one instrument. The friction and conversation that emerges between the interaction of the two players and the material assigned to them formed an essential part of Benjamin’s compositional process. The piece opens with quiet but insistent repeated notes, as fragments of melody begin to appear and, in turn, clouds of harmony. Different strands of music are played simultaneously and juxtaposed accordingly, against a slow-moving backdrop, which is disturbed by cascades and ripples.
Aimard also performed Benjamin’s Shadowlines in Berlin, a work he premiered in 2003. The 15-minute piece is a set of six canons of remarkable drama and invention, with Benjamin’s manipulation of the basic material going far beyond the usual procedures of transposition and invention, animated by hidden processes.
The pianist has championed Benjamin’s work for three decades. Along with DIVISIONS and Shadowlines, Aimard debuted Benjamin’s collection of miniatures Piano Figures in 2006 at the Philharmonie Luxembourg. In 2008 he commissioned Duet for piano and orchestra with Roche, the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst for the Lucerne Festival – a 12-minute work that for Benjamin is “an encounter between two equal partners, partners whose capacities, however, diverge in numerous essential ways.”