tu julgas que amas

tu julgas que amas

for piano

dur. ca. 3'

Commissioned by Antena 2/RTP, for Prémio Jovens Músicos 2016.

Premiered June 28, 2016

Salão Nobre do Conservatório Nacional, Lisboa

A tacinha de prata com que (...) o grupo de músicos vem fazer a colecta não recolheria uma única gutegroschen [moeda de três soldos e meio] se estes músicos boémios tivessem a impertinência de tocar música composta por eles. Tocam sempre trechos escolhidos de Beethoven, de Weber, de Mozart, e de autores ainda mais antigos como Bach e Händel.

Stendhal, O Rosa e o Verde

The pro­gram for the rounds was already pub­lic before I start­ed work on this piece. I skimmed, curi­ous, over the list, and found myself miss­ing some par­tic­u­lar names.

I would­n’t want to be mis­in­ter­pret­ed: I do feel at home in that pan­theon. (While I wrote this piece, I worked Scri­abin’s Pre­lude in E minor from op. 11 into my fin­gers; before that, what­ev­er lit­tle I could from Liszt’s Val­lée d’Ober­mann.) Still, this piece bare­ly tries to con­ceal a debt to oth­er mas­ters: Dutilleux (whose cen­ten­ni­al coin­cid­ed with the last days of work on this piece), Takemit­su (who depart­ed 20 years ago), Knussen or Strop­pa. Index­i­cal of that debt is my con­cep­tion of the piano as a great res­onat­ing body that con­jures space for seduc­tion, intro­spec­tion, loneliness.

This piece was com­mis­sioned by Ante­na 2 / RTP for the main qual­i­fy­ing round of Prémio Jovens Músi­cos 2016, and is ded­i­cat­ed to Luís Tinoco.