Ballade Pour Manos
This work is dedicated to my good friend and pianist Manos Kitsikopoulos. The first movement pays homage to Chopin, borrowing motifs from the Revolutionary and Winter Wind etudes from a more dissonant, frustrated and muddled perspective, creating a multilayered, poly-scalar environment. The second movement is based on four tones that create an “idée fixe.” As these develop in rhythm, time and space, new tones emerge, introducing bitonal harmonies. The third movement is the most “impressionistic” of the three, combining a new idée fixe with romantic and neoclassical elements. The main Alberti bass-style figure that functions alternately as both melody and accompaniment was inspired by Béatrice, a short, little-known piano piece by the great conductor and composer Dimitri Mitropoulos.