Four Thoughts
for solo piano
(2001/2004)
duration: 9’
GRT • 107
CD available
Mercurial
Patrick
Lawrence, piano
Reed Music
audio sample
1: The End of Winter
score
available from
Australian Music
Centre
program note
These
Four Thoughts
(2001/04) reveal the use of
solo piano as a direct medium for artistic expression but
also as a means to experiment with new musical ideas within
limited structures. The End of Winter
depicts a quiet optimism
typical of Greenbaum’s work. Dedicated to Flemish composer,
Wim Mertens, it elegantly opens this set of four
miniatures. For
Oliver was written
to mark the birth of the Greenbaum’s nephew, Oliver
Diplock. The simplest of the four, it is conceivably
playable by small hands though subtle harmonic shades of
blues and jazz create a tangible connection to the other
three. In Spirals (commissioned by David Cramond) a somewhat
more complex construction is found, expanding outward to
cross–related harmonies as the ‘spirals’ elongate toward
infinity. Based on a print of the same name by M. C.
Escher, the original wood engraving was produced in
December of 1953, the birth year of Kerry Landman (for
whose 50th birthday the piece is dedicated).
Finally, Bagatelle
for Aksel was
‘penned’ by the composer some 4 weeks after the birth of
his son. In the words of the new father: “It is a subtle
variation on a well-known children’s song which I sang to
Aksel in the hospital nursery about 20 minutes after he was
born. This was the first music he heard in the outside
world. Fragments of the song permeate the Bagatelle’s
structure, sometimes overtly, though never stated in full.”
The first recording of this work was made
by Patrick Lawrence in 2004.