login
0

Everything Waits for the Lilacs [Mailed Score] (1996)

$14.99

Samples
  • Everything Waits for the Lilacs
    SAMPLE.pdf

  • Everything Waits for the Lilacs
Instrumentation:Piano Solo [Advanced]
Genre:Piano Music

Commissioner: Piano Six (Janina Fialkowska)

Premiere: Janina Fialkowska, piano, numerous performances in British Columbia, Fall, 1997

Duration: 6 minutes

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS COLLECTION IS PUBLISHED WITH RED LEAF PIANOWORKS AND IS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE USING PAYPAL AS EITHER A HARD COPY (SHIPPED BY CANADA POST), AS A SINGLE-USE PDF (WHICH INCLUDES A PDF MUSIC BOOK LICENSE FROM JOHN BURGE) OR AS A MULTIPLE-USE STUDIO PDF (WHICH INCLUDES A STUDIO PDF LICENSE FROM JOHN BURGE). ALTERNATIVELY, TO MAKE OTHER PAYMENT ARRANGEMENTS THROUGH DIRECT INVOICE, CHEQUE, OR E-TRANSFER, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO SEND JOHN BURGE AN EMAIL. FINALLY, PLEASE NOTE THAT LONG AND MCQUADE NATIONAL MUSIC STORE ALSO DISTRIBUTES RED LEAF PIANOWORKS IN CANADA.

USE THIS PAGE'S SHOPPING CART TO ORDER A HARDCOPY OF THE MUSIC WHICH WILL BE MAILED TO YOU.

Everything Waits For The Lilacs was commissioned in 1996 by PIANO SIX, a group of Canadian concert pianists that included at the time: Angela Cheng, Janina Fialkowska, Marc André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt, André Laplante and Jon Kimura Parker.  Individually these artists have dedicated a ten-day period in their annual calendar to present a series of recitals, school concerts and master classes in communities that would otherwise not have an opportunity, or at least only rarely, to interact with international concert starts.  This group has also endeavoured to promote Canadian music by actively performing and commissioning music written by a wide selection of Canadian composers.

Everything Waits For The Lilacs is a brief, evocative work that captures the anticipation of spring.  The title is borrowed from the Margaret Avison poem, “Thaws,” which is found in her collection of poetry entitled, Sunblue.  The Canadian climate is such that it seems possible to define the moment when winter releases it grasp and the first blossoms unfold.  Or perhaps it is simply that the Canadian psyche reaches the point when it cannot bear the snow-bound landscape any longer and the awareness of the shifting season becomes heightened.  In any case, the music echoes appropriately with a strong sense of longing and desire.

Everything Waits For The Lilacs is gratefully dedicated to Dorothy Hare, a piano teacher in Calgary who was influential in the development of the composer’s musicianship and training.  The work was given its premiere performances by Janina Fialkowska during her fall tour of British Columbia in 1997.

The complete Margaret Avison poem is as follows:

“Thaws”

The snowflow
nearly-April releases   melting bright.
Then a darkdown
     needles and shells the pools.
Swepth of suncoursing sky
steeps us in
     salmon-stream
          crop-green
               rhubarb-coloured shrub-tips:
everything waits for the
lilacs, heaped tumbling – and their warm
licorice perfume.

From Sunblue by Margaret Avison © Copyright 1978 by Lancelot Press, Hantsport, Nova Scotia.  Used by Permission.

There is a fine YouTube video of Scott Meek playing this work: