The composer’s earliest acknowledged work, clearly inspired by the music of Bartok. Featured on the FREE album The American Evolution: Piano Sonatas.

for solo piano / 8 min.

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Program Note

Sonata for Piano is the earliest work of mine to remain in my active catalog. Dating from the second year of my graduate studies in composition, it reflects my discovery of the expressive range and structural innovations of early Modern music, especially those of Bela Bartok. I had just completed in-depth study of Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste. Like the second movement of that work, my single-movement Sonata is a classic sonata form in its ordering of musical ideas, but with a harmonic structure based on the diminished rather than the perfect fifth. I composed it very much for myself to perform, which I have always enjoyed, and I have been delighted at others’ embrace of a piece that retains very special associations for me of a time of discovery and great potential.

—Theodore Wiprud

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