Burgess Variations for Pianos, by composer Igor Tkachenko. Part 1 / 2.

Описание: "Burgess Variations for Pianos," by composer Igor Tkachenko. Part 1 / 2. Inspired by he Burgess Shale. (Part 2 is here:    • Burgess Variations for Pianos, by composer...  .) Explore his music page on Facebook:   / composerigortkachenko  

The Composer's Statement:
For several years now, I have been composing a series of short piano pieces that take as their foundational premise the notion of disregarding the biological limitations of human performance. For all practical purposes, these pieces are humanly unplayable, nor are they intended for performance as traditionally understood. For millennia, the structure of the human hand defined the performative boundaries beyond which music could not go. However, the evolution of musical instruments – from the bone flutes to the computer – has now enabled both musical composition and performance to transcend our physiological limitations: the five digits, the size and stretch of the hand, finger and wrist agility, dexterity, and rhythmical precision of hand and mind. Having found these considerations liberating, I decided to treat the piano as an essentially unlimited orchestral instrument.

As the number of these pieces grew to well over a hundred, it became necessary to organize them into some kind of order (while discarding many along the way). This work has coincided with my interest in the fascinating lifeforms of the Lower Cambrian period (over half a billion years ago), whose fossils have been discovered in the famous Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. Eventually that subjective association gave me the idea of pairing my pieces with images of these surreal creatures, and of using the sonorous names of Burgess fauna along the way. These Variations – in the literal, not the musical sense – are the result that I here offer to your attention.
-- Igor Tkachenko