Hellawell BASHO

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PIERS HELLAWELL

Basho –

for Solo Piano

Score

EDITION PETERS

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PIERS

HELLAWELL BASHO –

for Solo Piano

Duration c.6 minutes

This work began as a commission for a concert series in 1992. Although the plan collapsed before work was far advanced on the piece, it did leave a legacy in the piece’s design: one of the original stipulations had been that the work should reﬂect the godparenthood of an established piece in the repertoire, and I was immediately drawn to the double variations of Haydn’s Piccolo Divertimento in F minor. The new work is therefore a set of six pairs of short variations on two themes, contrasted not as minor/major like Haydn’s but as unison/chordal, an antithesis that continues through the six variation-pairs.

I was in 1992 surprised by my own enthusiasm for Japanese Sumo wrestling, and these variations were conceived as a wrestling bout or Basho between the two contrasted ideas. The 15 rounds of a Sumo contest are reﬂectes in the 2 themes, 12 variations and coda of this work. A further stipulation of the intended commission was that this work be available to amateur standards of performance. Although subsequently freed from this condition, I continued in the view that new music must cease to be the sole property of a few specialists; mountainous virtuosity plays no part in the great piano repertoire I so often revisit as listener rather than as performer.

First performed by Hubert du Plessis, Salle Cortot, Paris, 12 December 1997. UK premiere by Robert Keeley, King’s College, London, 27 February 2002.

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