Rosy Derivative was
written for the Hamburg-based pianist Sebastian Berweck, who premiered it in
February 2006 at Redlands University, with repeat performances at UC Berkeley and SUNY Buffalo. The piece is part of my chamber music
cycle Rausch des Vergessens.
The title of the cycle comes from Hermann Broch’s famous
novel The Death of Virgil, where in the
course of a climactic run-on sentence, the dying Virgil sees human figures walk
past him, and describes their physiognomies in overwhelmingly meticulous
detail, but fails to recognize them as people.
Thus the protagonist in Rosy Derivative treads continuously through the same landscape, but
is oblivious to the unchanging surroundings. Who is the protagonist? You or me?
The recording posted on this page was made at Krannert Center for the Arts in October 2006. Philipp Blume, piano