Programme notes

The interior of the piano is a metaphor for the wood.

The dense network of strings, frames, bridges, tuning pins, hammers, and dampers: trees, bushes, clearings, cobwebs, blades of grass, intricate paths winding through.

The performer inhabits the forest, creating life within it. Every contact with the surface reverberates; gestures merge and generate a dense sound texture, like voices and sounds coming from who knows where.

In Esta selva selvaggia (“this forest savage”, quoting Canto I of Dante's Inferno) gestures dominate, as in a toccata for organ or piano. But the keyboard is never touched.

Can you recognize the sound of creatures stirring in the forest?