Program note from the composer:
Jessica Johnson approached me with an idea to write a work inspired by Beethoven’s Opus 109. I began by playing it over and over again, and listening to various recordings. As I started composing, I found that I was improvising with small figures that I loved from 109. It reminded me of when I was a teenager and I used to improvise at the piano every night while my mom cooked dinner. I never wrote down these improvisations because it would have interrupted my flow. What I found as I was writing these pieces for Jessica Johnson was that I was back playing for my mom (in my imagination) but now I had such greater skill at writing things down that I could write as I improvised. Tempos should be fluid and improvisatory, and pedaling, while suggested, is at the discretion of the performer. - Elena Ruehr
