Daryl Runswick
Third Sonata   back to Concert Music
Aleksander Szram [Home]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Cellini

2 Boethius

3 Minotaur

DOWNLOAD!  Runswick: Third Sonata  Buy CD!

My Third Sonata for piano (2003-4) is an enormous set of six pieces, each a sonata in its own right, which last the best part of two hours in performance. The work is my manifesto for the concept of composed/improvised music (see my articles The Improvisation Continuum and Four essays around Third Sonata).

You can download the music from your usual source (click links above) or get the CD by emailing me.

Below you'll find other recordings of some of the sonatas, live recordings and CD out-takes by Aleks (and in one case by me) recorded at various times and places.

You'll be amazed at how different these pieces sound, even when they have the same title. Aleks improvises differently every time he plays these works. Listen to the two Blueprints here, then listen to the download/CD version.

 

 

4 Navratilova

5 Bashô

6 Blueprint

 

Minotaur CD out-take

Navratilova York 5/5/09

Blueprint 1   London 6/1/09

Blueprint 2 York 5/5/09

 

In the Third Sonata article I mention that Navratilova began as an improvisation of my own, played into a sequencer, from which I adapted much of the material for the sonata. Flail is that improvisation. It is a totally free impro, so it doesn't observe the modes I later imposed on the music, and it was made deliberately with a view to being turned into Navratilova, so I didn't set out to make a 'finished' structure. All things considered, then, it came out rather well.

Flail London 24/3/04

 

 

You can see from the score pages above that there are similarities between these pieces. In fact they are structurally identical. The sections, their lengths and their keys (actually their modes) never change throughout the six sonatas, only the notes played. In Navratilova I supply the beginnings of the sections (I 'serve') and the performer has to improvise ('return') in the same style for the length of time specified. In Blueprint I supply no composed music at all: the player must improvise on the given mode from scratch.

Blueprint 1 recorded live in concert at the Peacock Room, Trinity College of Music, London, 6th January 2009.
Navratilova and Blueprint 2 recorded live in concert at the Rymer Auditorium, University of York, 5th May 2009.
Minotaur recorded during the CD sessions, 11th July 2012 at The DReam Room, London.
Flail improvised on 24th March 2004 at The DReam Room, London.