Sonata for Piano
Daniel Burwasser
About this work:
The Sonata for Piano is a single movement work which was completed in May of 1987 and was premiered by Gary Hammond one year later at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York on May 2, 1988. Hammond performed it again later that month at Hunter College. It was later revised in 1998 after a performance given by Anahit Nersisian in Yerevan, Armenia.
“The Best Language for Dialogue”
... Professor Anahit Nersisian presented Daniel Burwasser’s Piano Sonata. Serving as the foundation of this one-movement work was a leitmotif consisting of four notes which, at one point, I found similar to the doleful call of the sea in Wagner’s Tristan. It is a “fixed emotion”, which continually demanded a resolution. I could only take a slight breath at the intermittent clearings in the sonata’s sonorously superdense jungles.”
...Daniel the Musician. Haik, October 25, 1997
(Translated from the Armenian by Aris Sevag)
Version: rev. 1998
Year composed: 1987
Duration: 00:15:00
Ensemble type: Keyboard:Piano
Instrumentation: 1 Piano
Instrumentation notes: pno