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“I approve  every wild action of the experimenters . . .
    . . .I say what they say . . . .and my only apology for not doing
                their work is preoccupation of mind. I have a work of my own which I think I can  .. . ."

                                                                     Ralph Waldo Emerson

David Lidov’s Sonatina for violin and piano was composed for Kenneth and Liora Sarch, who introduced him to the Venezuelan Joropo, a rustic derivative of the waltz here imitated in the second movement.

Lidov’s Three Songs of Duty bring together Henry Thoreau’s commands but half obeyed, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s apologetic pass on social experiment in favour of a work of my own, and from a fine poem we hope you know well, Robert Frost’s miles to go before I sleep.

Costellazioni (1965): Riccardo Malipiero (along with Luigi Dallapiccola) was one of the first Italian composers to use the new technique unveiled by Schoenberg, and it became a very personal tool which retains the lyricism, dramatic colour and capacity for ornate digression that we associate with Italian tradition. The Costellazioni, which belongs to Malipiero’s years of maturity, is a major addition to the piano solo literature. Its date of composition places it alongside the epoch-making Herma by Iannis Xenakis and the Sequenza IV by fellow Italian Luciano Berio.

Lidov’s Phases are programmatic. There are two actual and one projected Phases of Courtship for different ensembles. Although ÒinspiredÓ by the description of cockroach mating rituals in William Jordan, Divorce Among the Gulls, the images that fed the composition are all of humans. Phases I: Antics, commissioned and performed by the Burdocks ensemble in 1999, imagined attention getting, perhaps from someone in particular. Tonite’s Phases II: Under the spell . . .(2003) imagines the gradual disarming of personal space within the comfort zone of good manners in a luxurious ambience: tongue tied at first, with stiff conversation gradually yielding to quick dancing and, in the end, eye contact. Phases III: Serious Conversation, for clarinet and string trio isn’t composed yet.

Tania Leon’s Momentum (1984) was commissioned by the International Congress of Women in Music. New York’s Newsday described it as a brief, dense synthesis of American, Latin and International styles. The work combines what sounds like serial tone rows with touches of moody, jumbled Latin dance rhythms.

Orlando Jacinto Garcia’s Oscurecimiento gradual (slowly darkening) of 2005 was composed for the pianist Max Lifchitz and the 2005 Nuovi Spazi Musicali Festival held in Rome. The title refers both to slowly decaying sounds tending towards darker timbres and to the fading light of twilight.

In Mistica (2003,) Leon builds sustained rhythmic cycles and harmonic cascades. Fragments of a Guajira/Son/Danz—n contrast with the timbral sound world that envelops the whole where sudden ostinatos and quick gestures interweave to create abrupt changes of mood and character.