Five Romances

‘Humour plays a role, and my pieces are also an attempt to entertain people.’ Words not often associated with contemporary music, but Wilhelm Killmayer wants to place fun and seriousness side by side. Different tonal spheres are found in the “Impromptu” and the jaunty “Scherzo lento” which uses tap tones for example. The “Chorale” that follows allows the music to drift seamlessly into atonality. In the fourth romance ‘Im Schumannschen Ton’ (‘The Schumann Sound’), a diatonic melody is complicated so much that the ending distorts to the beginning, ‘just like man combines many different qualities’.

In the concluding “Capriccio”, shifting time signatures and dynamic fluctuations are combined in a virtuoso manner. A humourous piece which demands the purest concentration from the players.