Search - George Rochberg, Sally Pinkas :: Rochberg: Piano Music, Vol. 4 - Carnival Music; Four Short Sonatas; Variations on an Original Theme

Opposites abound in George
Rochberg's music, never more so
perhaps than in Carnival Music, his
only piano work to employ popular
musical idioms, where one encounters
exuberance and introspection, great
power and deep reflection. His Four
Short Sonatas hark back to a time
when 'sonata' referred to a single movement composition, though
Rochberg has cunningly grouped
these brief pieces into a work that
follows the Classical four-movement
pattern. Unabashedly beautiful and
shamelessly expressive, the Variations
on an Original Theme is a virtuosic
composition in the unsettling key of
D flat major.