Composer’s note

I had been playing the solo piano part in my concertino with the Arthur Rubenstein Philharmonic Orchestra of Łódż during the 2006 Tansman Composition Competition, in which I was a prize winning finalist. Two month later, I had an invitation from Tansman’s two daughters, Mireille Tansman Zanuttini and Marianne Tansman to visit their home in Paris. during which time, I played, on Tansman’s piano, his Alla Polacca, for viola and pian - his last work, written in 1986 which is the basis of the second piece of my Two Portraits of Łódż.

At bar 47 of my Fantasia, I begin developing away from the original Tansman, not returning there until bar 269 where, as at the beginning, the work by Tansman is totally unchanged. The journey away from the original consists of four stages:

(1) the gradual addition of chromatic notes and repeating motivic fragments (2) an extension of the melody in parallel triads over a rich sustained harmony in the remote key of D flat, (3) a disturbing pizzicato passage where the melody is totally chromaticised and (4) a lead-back characterised by rising scales and unaltered fragments of the original theme heard against an F pedal, as if in a dream.

During my stay in Łódż, competition adjudicator Menachem Zur showed us round the Jewish Cemetery, leading to the composition of the first work of the suite, The Old Jewish Cemetery of Łódż. This is a simple and direct expression of a reaction to the starkness of the mortuary’s dark wooden biers and plain white walls. The lack of ostentation and the appalling history of the location seemed to impregnate the place with a heavy and oppressive sadness; this dictated the musical language, which moves from four in a bar to three, suggesting that, even in oppression, there may be some relief. Indeed, the works ends evoking the interior of the dome at the centre of the cemetery, decorated with lush palm trees set in Byzantine golden mosaic.