Piano Fantasy

Extract

My Piano Fantasy, completed in January of this year, is a large-scale work in one movement, lasting half an hour in performance. A long and continuous one-movement form has always seemed to me one of the most taxing assignments a composer can undertake. The word assignment is perhaps ill-chosen, since this particular task was self-imposed. My idea was to attempt a composition that would suggest the quality of fantasy, that is, a spontaneous and unpremeditated sequence of “events” that would carry the listener irresistibly (if possible) from first note to last, while at the same time exemplifying clear if somewhat unconventional structural principles. “The spontaneous,” says Paul Valéry, “is the fruit of conquest.” It implies a creator who can “keep the unity of a work's ensemble while realizing the separate parts and without losing its spirit or nature on the way.” To give free rein to the imagination without loss of coherence, to be “fantastic” without losing one's bearings, is venturesome, to say the least. And yet a work of art seems to me the ideal proving ground for just such a venture. At any rate, my Piano Fantasy is such a venture.