The Red Studio

Notes

For John Snijders. Premiered by him on BBC Radio 3 on 9 January 2016.

John told me about the lost art of preluding, when pianists would improvise introductions to, and links between, the different works in a concert. I’ve written four very different sorts of music, each a sort of closed system, connected by preludes, interludes and postludes. The result is like one of those paintings in which the artist depicts his own studio, as  in Matisse’s painting, The Red Studio. The BBC made a short film about the piece at the time of the recording.