Composed: 2001
Duration: 6 minutes
First Performance: August 2001 at the Three Choirs Festival, Gloucester, given by the pianist Phillip Dyson.
The composer writes:
When searching for a title for a new composition one takes much into consideration, the nature of the piece, the medium, and the performer. When Phillip Dyson asked me to write a work for him, I began to consider all three points carefully.
My last composition for solo piano was my Three Short Pieces Op. 5, and much "compositional water" has gone under the bridge since then. I knew that it would be an exciting challenge. I ultimately came up with a title Dyson's Caprice, and while the work does not sustain a capricious feel throughout, the overriding mood is one of lightness and joy. I cannot, however, avoid my musical nature, and so what has been described – positively, by one critic – as my "saturated melancholy", makes an appearance.
The work is full of contrasts, and I have tried to temper the lightness of mood with moments of virtuosity. This virtuosity, however, is never at the expense of structure or thematic and melodic development, and it was here that Phillip Dyson's excellent technique allowed me to "let go" and give him both a musical and a technical challenge.
Dyson's Caprice opens with a strong, chordal idea in 3/8 and an insistent rhythmic figure that passes between the hands. Both act as an introduction to a highly driven melodic idea which becomes the driving force behind much of the music that follows. After a fortissimo climax and much virtuoso writing a more lyrical passage using the five note motive from the introduction leads to the slow central section. Here a simple melodic idea underpinned by oscillating chords recalls the joie de vivre of the work's opening and leads to a powerful climax based upon ideas from the earlier material. The return of the introductory music with slight variation takes us to the coda, which ends this short work in an abrupt and almost "throw-away" manner.