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These four pieces for piano and cello have been gestating over many years but were not fully realized until 2009. The music's origins lie partly in the personal and partly in the poetic. The second and third movements were inspired by memories of the Russian composers (husband and wife) Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova, whom I met in 1989 at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union; their personalities and their music, contrasting and yet belonging together, are at the heart of Lumina. The outer movements echo and pre-echo the music at the centre, not so much the rhythms and pitches but the poetic content – an expression of contemplative joy and impassioned struggle.
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Descriptive leaflet (pdf)