PROGRAM NOTE:

The House Explodes was written for pianist, Hsing-ay Hsu.  As mothers of girls, we have both experienced the radical external and internal changes of parenthood, as well as the challenge of pursuing an artistic life while being a mother.  Comprised of intensifying gestures that begin small and expand in various ways, The House Explodes expresses similar qualities of internal churning and wide-ranging emotions.  The piece takes advantage of the extremely large physical as well as dramatic range of the piano, the pianist’s ability to play 5-finger patterns with extreme speed, and the accumulation of sound within the instrument made possible by the damper pedal.  Restless scales spill up and down the piano, eventually erupting into cluster chords.  The energy of the first two sections resolves into a nocturnal final section.