When I was proposed the idea of writing a 6-hand work for piano for the 3-member junctQín Piano Collective, my first reaction was ambivalence. What could I possibly do with three players on one piano? After some contemplation on it, I realized that I already think in these terms when composing orchestral music – composing in three layers (foreground, midground, and background). So, composing for the full range of the piano with three pianists involved came surprisingly natural for me and was a fun way to discover what can be done when given these parameters.
The work is in five parts. The first is a prelude that is built on various coloristic gestures that are expressed as musical “brushstrokes”. A simple theme soon emerges (played in the mid-range by the middle player) that is continuously repeated, leading into the second part of the work. The lower player joins in with a groovy chord progression harkening the spirit of blues and jazz. The upper player then completes the texture with music inspired by the sounds of gamelan music. Together they create a polyphonic fabric of three distinct layers of music, each one inspired by different musical traditions – jazz, Chinese folk, and gamelan.
As the music builds to a climax, we are soon plunged into the third section – a fast-paced 3-part fugato. Each line “chases” one another while getting shorter and shorter in length, eventually getting caught up in a motivic frenzy. This then leads into a climactic dance that is propelled by a constant beat, as played by the lower player, while the middle and upper players unleashes with the gamelan-inspired music from before. The fifth and final part of the work is a postlude, built on other coloristic gestures like those of the opening prelude, that brings everything to a calm while providing relief from the highly kinetic journey that the players have undergone