Aucoin: Three Études

Description

These are studies not of particular technical challenges of piano playing, but rather in forms of musical motion and pianistic sonic possibilities. The playful "rondo which devours itself" consists of a recurring fragmentary line in the right hand that is constantly menaced by opposing forces in the music, little electric jolts that force the line to grow shorter and shorter over the piece's brief lifespan, until the whole complex self-combusts. The untitled second piece is a study in a strange, hovering form of perpetual motion. and the third, "a sounding," is a melancholy sounding of the depths of the piano's rich capacity for resonance. — Matthew Aucoin