The Piano Tuner: three preludes and five fugues for piano trio.

This piano trio was written as a sketch work for my opera The Piano Tuner. The story is set in the 1880s and concerns a piano tuner who is commissioned by the War Office to travel to the Shan states of Burma to tune the piano of an extraordinary British office who has succeeded in making peace among the warlords by the practice of music and medicine.

The piano tuner travels from London with Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues in his luggage, across continents, from teh world of so-called equal temperament, through zones of changing intonations - maqams, ragas, tals and untempered pentatonics - to the rich resonances of gongs and the natural sounds of the forests of South East Asia, and ultimately to his own transformation as man and musician. The piece is in eight movements:

Prelude I: Tuning

Fugue I: Tetrachord, Hexachord

Prelude II: Sensations of Travel
Fugue II: Sea Bird

Fugue III: Dragonfly

Fugue IV: Tiger

Prelude III: Song of Loss

Fugue V: Fractal Counterpoint

The Piano Tuner was commissioned by the City of London Festival for the Piano Trio of Vienna and first performed by them on 23rd June 2004 at LSO St Luke's.