PETER EÖTVÖS (b.1944): Sonata per sei for 2 Pianos, 3 Percussionists and Sampler Keyboard, Psalm 151 - in memoriam Frank Zappa for 4 Percussionists, Kosmos for 2 Pianos.

Description: The Sonata is explicitly an homage to Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and parts of it sound very Bartokian indeed, though often as one layer with other, more obviously modern material moving in parallel with it, creating a complex texture. The expanded forces include a synthesizer which sometimes appears in the role of a strange percussion instrument, sometimes that of a prepared-sounding piano, and sometimes adds sustained background textures of its own. The work emerges as a portrait of Bartok with futurist or cubist distortions, movingly tragic in its depiction of his exile and final years. Psalm 151 "The one that is not in the Bible" is a work of protest, not praise, at Frank Zappa's early death. It is ritualistically arranged in verses and refrains, played, sometimes with extended techniques, on different groups of percussion instruments. The early work Kosmos was the composer's response to Yuri Gagarin's pioneering spaceflight, and also to the musical language of Bartók, whose Mikrokosmos is briefly quoted in the work. The same score is played by the two pianists, deliberately unsynchronised, producing phase shift effects in the depictions of various astrophysical phenomena. Grau Schumacher Piano Duo, Cologne Percussion Quartet, Paulo Álvares (keyboard).