Piano Jubilees

Piano Jubilees is a set of six piano works, the first of which was commissioned by the Royal Festival Hall in London as a birthday present for Pierre Boulez in 2000. I continued the series and the whole set was completed before the year was out.

Piano Jubilees was a challenging assignment because it meant I was, as it were, able to uncork the problem of short form. It marks the beginning of a new strand in my output in that it is the first of my works to be made up of short movements and the six movements together form a harmonious entity.

There are very diverse pianistic solutions in the Piano Jubilees suite. It bears a distant relationship to Debussy’s and Chopin’s studies since they too operate on clearly defined textures. The first movement contains the most events. The following movements undergo a process of purification so that in the last the harmony rises to the surface stripped of all else: the overall dramaturgy has been clarified.

Writing for the piano is difficult, not least because it is my own instrument. It is a challenging instrument also for those who have written little for it: I would define it as a lie detector for a composer.

Magnus Lindberg, July 2007

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This programme note can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with a credit to the composer