Yehudi Wyner: A Little Late Music: Four Pieces for Piano

for pf

Composer note
Composed over a stretch of a dozen years, three of these compositions are "occasional" pieces, written as gifts to celebrate a birthday or commemorate some personal event.

The earliest — Reinhold Brinkmann…Warum? — was a response to the news that the eminent historian and musicologist was about to return to his native Germany following retirement from Harvard University. We felt a great sense of personal loss.

The miniature homage Christoph Wolff was a birthday greeting for the renowned scholar and friend.

A Little Late Music began as an easy piano piece for my grandson Eli, intended as a gift to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah at age thirteen. The appropriate date passed, the composition grew and became more intricate and finally, three years later, was delivered as a birthday gift. Hence, "A Little Late Music."

Amoroso is in a slightly different category. It was commissioned by the artist Luigi Terruso as a memorial to his recently deceased life companion and is the most recent of the four.

The four pieces were never conceived as a set or a suite. Designating them as "occasional" does not suggest that they are casual or careless. They share the same craft as would be lavished on more ambitious compositions. They may be performed individually or as a group in any order that seems convincing.

— Yehudi Wyner, June 2015