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'This music deserves the widest acclaim, for its optimistic, heroic aesthetic is immediately accessible yet never commonplace.' International Piano

Piano Sonata

Forces or Category: Solo piano

A technically demanding work for solo piano which moves through a variety of moods and tempi.

'This music deserves the widest acclaim, for its optimistic, heroic aesthetic is immediately accessible yet never commonplace.' International Piano

Piano Sonata

Description

Utilizing the standard 3 movement sonata outline, Jackson employs a variety of textures to great effect in this piece, his first Piano Sonata. In the first movement alone, the music moves through homophonic, unison, canonic and monophonic textures. The work is technically demanding and moves through a variety of moods and tempos.
Commissioned by David Wilde with funds provided by the Scottish Arts Council, the Britten-Pears Foundation, and the RVW Trust.

Programme Notes:

"All music is about other music". It was Louis Andriessen, I think, who said this - it is certainly the sort of thing he would say! - and this very Stravinskian notion is one that informs much of work. While my Piano Sonata is certainly about the piano itself â its power, its myriad of colours, its delicacy and its contrapuntal clarity â it is also about the piano's literature; the great sonatas of Chopin and Lizst, of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Tippett are always present in the background of the music and sometimes, quite consciously, in its foreground too.

The piece is in three movements â fast/slow/fast. The first movement is mostly muscular and propulsive, though it has moments of repose. There are hints of sonata form, but it owes more to the example of CPE Bach in its mosaic of abrupt juxtapositions and repetitions of widely contrasted materials, including a sly reference to Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata. (Late) Beethoven is also a presence in the slow movement â three variations on a simple chorale which is gradually overlayed with arabesques, trills and increasingly elaborate ornamentation before a sudden return to the calm of the opening. The finale is a moto perpetuo toccata, brittle and glistening, with a coruscating carillon of bell-chords at its close.
The sonata was commissioned David Wilde with funds provided by the Scottish Arts Council, the RVW Trust and the Britten-Pears Foundation.'
Copyright Gabriel Jackson

'This music deserves the widest acclaim, for its optimistic, heroic aesthetic is immediately accessible yet never commonplace.' International Piano

Piano Sonata

Gabriel Jackson

Composer Information

Gabriel Jackson (b.1962)

One of Britain's foremost composers, after three years as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, Gabriel Jackson went on to study composition with Richard Blackford and John Lambert at the Royal College of Music. Particularly acclaimed for his choral works, his liturgical pieces are in the repertoires of most of Britain's cathedral and collegiate choirs and he is a frequent collaborator with the leading professional groups of the world. From 2010-2013 he was Associate Composer to the BBC Singers. In 2014 his hour-long The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, commissioned for the 750th anniversary of Merton College, Oxford, was premiered in its chapel. May 2015 saw the premiere at the Latvian National Opera of Spring Rounds for soprano, choir and orchestra, commissioned by the Riga-based youth choir Kamer for their 25th anniversary. He was recently commissioned by The Marian Consort to write Stabat Mater to mark their 10th anniversary.

Gabriel Jackson's website

'This music deserves the widest acclaim, for its optimistic, heroic aesthetic is immediately accessible yet never commonplace.' International Piano

Piano Sonata

Gabriel Jackson

Reviews and Awards

"This music deserves the widest acclaim, for its optimistic, heroic aesthetic is immediately accessible yet never commonplace. The influence of the Tippett sonatas is clear in many of the textures and colours, and the chordal sonorities in the central slow movement are especially striking, bringing quasi-orchestral luminosity to a work that is nonetheless predominantly linear. The outer movements sparkle in atonal toccata figurations. At under 20 minutes, the Sonata is highly concentrated, yet it covers a huge emotional range, a plethora of figurations and a sophisticated palette of rhythms. This is music to be played by professionals only, perhaps, but there is nothing aloof about its emotional core." - International Piano, April 09