Description
Sometime in late 2014 David Brain suggested I write a piano Sonata for him to perform. He indicated that he favoured a single movement work around twenty minutes' duration, and that it should be - at least in part - a ‘programme’ piece. He suggested Frankenstein as the inspiration. I agreed to try and the Sonata, completed in August 2015, is the result.
Some elements of sonata form are discernible in the work, namely the two contrasted subjects. The development is incorporated within the one-movement structure but contains a scherzo whose material fuses with the other ideas, with sudden recitativo passages suggestive of dialogue. The work is not programmatic for its entire length, but some of the events in the story may be suggested, particularly in the development section which builds to two violent climaxes, after which a long elegiac section brings the music back to its initial bleak sombre mood.
David Brain gave the first performance of this work on May 21, 2016, at the John Savage Centre in Hainault.
Nick Ray
