COMPOSERS IN PLAY IX: Sherkin's Piano Sonatas at Tenri Cultural Institute

Pianist/Composer Adam Sherkin presents a unique program featuring his own four piano sonatas, written over a span of fifteen years: 2008 to 2024.

Adam Sherkin's piano sonatas, written over the span of fifteen years, encompass multiple stylistic periods in the artist's output and pose considerable virtuosic demands. Sherkin has conceived of sonata-form with a broad, 21st century approach: each work has a subtitle bearing an extra musical reference but the materials in play remain abstract and objective. Sonata No. 1, "Sunderance," written in 2008, was inspired by an essay of Virginia Woolf's. Sonata No. 2 "Cwn Annwn" (or, "Hounds of Hell") is a three-movement work, depicting various accounts of the spectral hounds of the Welsh afterworld. Ancient folklore tells of eerie dogs with blood red eyes who growl loudest when they are at a distance. As they approach, their cries soften; upon closest appearance they bring portents of death. The Third Sonata, "Ended in Ice" derives its title from a well-known poem by Robert Frost; the work was written after Sherkin travelled to Iceland in 2017. Finally, Sonata No. 4 with toy piano, "Rumours of Green," receives its world premiere: imagining the threat of an antidemocratic future plagued by climate crises and lack of resources, while looking backward to history and humanity's cycle of - and compulsion for - war.