SONATA NOTTURNA
'cello & piano
(1981 rev. 1985)
This work was written when I was a student: it won a prize at the Stroud Composer's Competition and was premiered and recorded by Timothy Hugh and Robert Lockhart. In 1985 it was featured at a New Music Festival in Banff, Canada, and for that series of performances I omitted a second movement (originally there were four) and made minor changes to the piano and 'cello writing. The title 'Sonata Notturna' reflected the works inspiration in the crepuscular and sinister world of the symbolist painter Odilon Redon. The three linked movements exploit the lowest registers of the 'cello and piano, ranging from a rhapsodic Prelude, a theatrical and parodic 'Burlesque', which at one point quotes a theme from Rimsky-Korsakov's macabre little fairy-tale opera 'Kashchey the Immortal' (1902) and subsides with a drained and numb 'Berceuse'.
First performed 14 October 1981 by Timothy Hugh and Robert Lockhart, Stroud International Festival, Stroud, Gloucestershire. Revised version 22 March 1987 by Allan Clayton and Elizabeth ? Banff New Music Days, Banff, Alberta, Canada