2 pianos, 4 hands

SKU: BO.B.3641

Composed by Daniel Basomba. Published by Editorial de Musica Boileau (BO.B.3641).

These Three Studies for Four-handed Piano were conceived of as a triptych whose unifying principles were to be the first-slow-fast movement order of the classical sonata and a symmetrical arrangement of tonalities with A major occupying the centre (F minor- A major- C minor). The term Studies alludes not so much to the 19th century pedagogical concept of pieces-as-exercises, as to an attempt to extend, investigate and study the possibilities of expression and texture of the piano for four hands.

The First Study is generated out of a single rhythmical motif whose development is modified by the intervention of two contrapuntual passages. A certain difficulty of execution arising from the need to cross hands in both sections of the keyboard conforms, in this case, to the traditional definition of study as an exercise focussed on a specific technical problem.

The second piece might be defined as a study of expression, being the explicit disposition of an ostinato accompaniment and two superior voices in conversation. I cannot help, listening to this study, being reminded of the texture of the slow Largo of Bach's Concerto for 2 violins and the manifest pathos of the Andante of Prokofiev's 2nd Violin Concerto.

The Third Study is an exercise in rhythmical interpenetration in which continual changes of accentuation and metre are combined with passages of a light and mellifluous character.

It is a long-standing ambition of mine to supplement this work with three more triptychs and, so, complete a set of twelve studies for four-handed piano.

1 piano, 4 hands

SKU: BO.B.3642

Composed by Daniel Basomba. Published by Editorial de Musica Boileau (BO.B.3642).

This four-handed piano work was conceived as a kind of symphonic poem with a rhapsodical form. The structural balance comes out of the strong opposition between the assertively motorized passages and those with a euphoric lyricism. The programmatic discourse deals with the great Quixotic themes -madness, idealized love, the struggle between the individual and society, and death- interconnect not as a description of the facts of the novel, but rather as an attempt to sketch a portrait of the Knight of the Sad Countenance and his interior psychological conflict. The rhythmic element represents Quixote´s obstinate resistance and his heroic defence of his ideal when faced with the prosaic and mocking incomprehension of those around him. The melodic themes symbolize the retreat into oneself and the search for interior refuge. In keeping with the Germanic conception of Don Quixote which refused to accept his final, sad capitulation, I have, like Nietzsche and Thomas Mann, tried to give our hero´s story a victorious ending- one without knee-bending or lowering-of-the-gaze.