Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 03/01/1983, uploaded on 10/19/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

...Similar in character is the Pastorale, which along with the later Eglogue is one of two of the nine pieces of Première année not to reference a specific programmatic element, nor does it bare a literary quotation at its head. A fleeting Vivace, the piece alternates between two contrasting sections. The first is a lively melody in E major that proceeds mostly in sixths and thirds against bucolic, skipping fifths in the bass; the second is an even more vigorous ostinato-like subject in B major over drone fifths. Both section are repeated, with the second undergoing a slight embellishment. The dizzying figure of the latter subject swirls about the mediant, outlining a dominant harmony atop the tonic pedal in the bass, until it eventually exhausts itself of all energy by the time it closes on the tonic note.        Joseph DuBose

Recorded in March of 1983 in London