L’enfance en éclat & Toccata

L’enfance en éclats 2001 [Childhood Shattered]

As its title suggests, Childhood Shattered is program music. A simple and graceful tune, symbolizing childhood, is abruptly interrupted by a horrific, dissonant chord. The tune returns ; but the echo of the chord, still lingering in the background, tells us that the memory of the traumatic event persists. Life has darkened. Nothing is as it was before. The initial melody wanders into keys ever stranger and more distant, ultimately arriving at a new theme, obsessive, with grating seconds and thrusting accents. This shattered childhood and its episodes of aimlessness, will it give birth to new certainties?

The piece is an exercise in contrasting detached notes with tied notes.

Commissioned by the Association Jeune musique. Required work at the International Piano Competition Freiburg - Jeune Musique, 2002.

Toccata (2004)

This piece by Caroline Charrière issues from the historical lineage of the toccata, traditionally an exercise of dexterity characterized by repeated musical motifs.

The introduction is constructed of subtly displaced upper-register chords in the right hand that alternate with two lower notes in the left hand, creating an almost meditative preamble. In the rapid section of the piece, the performer playfully exploits the keyboard's full breadth in the course of spirited dialogues between notes high and low.

Commissioned by the Association Jeune Musique. Required work in Category IV at the International Piano Competition Freiburg - Jeune musique, 2004.

Irène Minder-Jeanneret