Shaping the Curve

Shaping The Curve is based strictly on a sequence of four chords and served as a study for Nyman’s 1991 piece Where The Bee Dances for Saxophone and Orchestra.Michael Nyman is a contemporary British composer of richly layered modular minimalist pieces often incorporating period instruments or instrumentation outside the normal Orchestral offerings. He is particularly well known for his film scores including The Piano The Cook The Thief His Wifeand Her Lover Prospero’s Books and The Claim among many others. His work is widely performed.

Piers Hellawell's Hall Of Mirrors for Piano Quartet.Hall Of Mirrors was my first contribution to the Schubert Ensemble's unique initiative to bring practicable chamber music to young string players and pianists. It was written in summer of 1998 in the wake of my 'full-scale' piano quartet The Building Of Curves itself a commission from the Schubert Ensemble and was first performed at the Dartington Summer School. Hall Of Mirrors is also scored for piano quartet although the viola part is playable by a second violin and is thus scored in the treble clef.At the suggestion of the Ensemble I sought to provide an analogue of the larger work ascaled-down expression that used materials clearly related to its parent. I believe that the success of this project relies in large part on its new pieces being genuinely representative of their composers rather than mere exercises that provide a product. Hall Of Mirrors therefore tries to establish a similarly unsettled atmosphere to that of the second movement of The Building of Curves and it uses the same open-string C/D ostinato for cello and nightmarish free glissandi for violin - both materials that can be impressively brought off by a player of limited virtuosity! Hall Of Mirrors was generously commissioned by Jane Ferguson. Its title indicates a reshaping of some features of the larger edifice The Building of Curves. - Piers Hellawell