Michael Tippett's four piano sonatas are described as highly inventive, totally idiosyncratic music, lyrical, ecstatic, expansive, luminous, dramatic, and bracingly hard-edged.
Composition History
Paul Crossley, a pianist, met with Michael Tippett during the creation of Piano Sonata No. 4 to demonstrate piano techniques, which ignited Tippett's ideas for the work.
Compositional Technique
Oliver Knussen's Variations for Piano Op. 24 derives all its thematic material from just the first six notes: a four-note flourish followed by a falling third.
Composer Biography
Discussions of Michael Tippett, the composer of Piano Sonatas No. 2 and No. 4, inevitably lead back to Ludwig van Beethoven, who had a monumental lifelong influence on him.
Composition History
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 81a 'Les Adieux' is his only overtly programmatic sonata, dedicated to Archduke Rudolph, and portrays the distress of parting during the French siege of Vienna.
Composition History
Michael Tippett's Piano Sonata No. 4 was originally conceived as a set of Bagatelles, modeled on Beethoven's Op. 126.
Compositional Technique
Michael Tippett's Piano Sonata No. 2, composed in 1962, uses a new style of uncompromisingly juxtaposed fragments, sometimes lasting only a few seconds, fitted together like mosaics.
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