Music Musicology Poetry Gallery

Interchanges for 2 Pianos
1982, 10:30

As the title conveys, the piece is built on the idea of an exchange between the two instruments, sometimes focused on contrast, sometimes on reinforcing simultaneity. It is in four movements, marked "Forcefully," "Precisely/Delicately," "Scherzando," and "Meditatively."

In the first movement, the exchanges are entirely smooth, merging the two instruments together in a common effort and movement through time, while in the second, chordal structures introduce a vertical emphasis that is broken up only at the end. The third movement, virtuosic at its conclusion, combines the features of the first two movements. The piece ends meditatively, in a choral-like fashion, played by a single instrument, or by the two instruments in unisono.