This volume comprises of Lilburn's four piano sonatas. The sonata in F sharp minor is a work of pure Romantic sensibility, while the sonata for piano in A minor reveals Lilburn's very sharply realised visual sense. There is a bracing, lyrical power to his 1949 sonata, the curve and grain of the music partaking of an impressive physical space. The second sonata, from 1956, provides an outstanding example of Lilburn's "orchestration" of piano colour and his sensitive balancing of tonal relationships.
Douglas Liburn occupies a pre-eminent position in New Zealand music, with a legacy extending well beyond his compositional output. As a composer, a teacher, and later as a warm, generous and encouraging background presence, he presided in innumerable ways over the artistic growth of this country. His music, from the early works redolent of the influence of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, to the electroacoustic pieces of his later years, makes up a corpus of works that has been instrumental in establishing a genuinely vernacular voice in New Zealand classical music.
