Oh, I would also like to add that I very much enjoyed the concert; I very much enjoyed/was impressed by the Strauss/Sorabji (alas I had not managed to actually listen to Salome beforehand However, I think the memory I retain of it is vivid enough to that I'll be able to bring it to mind whenever I do get around to it) and the Ives, and did rather like some of the voicings in the Alkan; the White sonata isn't my favourite of the ones I've heard so far, but it was pretty solid I think.  Other stuff was all good.

Oh yes, and your sonatas.  I personally was slightly more endeared to the first (that is to say, the fourth) than the second (that is to say, the third), though largely because I found more I could hold on to in my mind in the first (though, as with most extended works, it's rather hard to get a satisfactory grasp of what's going on in the first hearing).  Also, while I know tune-spotting is something of a insidious art, was the quiet section right at the end of the fourth sonata consciously drawn from a theme of Verklaerte Nacht (from a quick glance at my iPod, it can be heard circa two-thirds into the Molto rallentando section)?

Alas, your sonatas, it seems, didn't appeal to everyone.  Behind me was sitting a chap who, after the first half, was rather disappointed with the concert as a whole; he hadn't heard of a single composer, that he had gotten nothing from the Ives or the Hinton, and complained that there wasn't enough working-class music; he had expected some pieces by Chopin; a few nocturnes, say, you know?

(Of course I do sympathise with him to some extent.  However the Albeniz of the second half should have sufficed).

Thank you very much!

Not consciously, no - and I'm still not yet quite sure what particular reference to that work (which I have loved dearly for many years, by the way) that I might have made subconsciously, either - perhaps you can enlighten me (it's often fascinating when people find these things of which one was quite simply unaware).

I suppose that I'd have been a little surprised if they did so without any exception whatsoever!...

To which I can only make the following comments. Since it is somewhat unlikely that he attended the concert cold - i.e. without so much as a shred of advance knowledge of or expectations about whose music Jonathan Powell was to be playing - the fact that he had never heard of any of the composers featured on the programme is at least something of which he must have been aware before attending; that said, the fact that he had never heard of Alkan, Skryabin, Albéniz or Strauss rather suggests to me that he might have been the one other audience member (besides the one that "jennyhorn" mentioned yesterday having taken to the event) who had never previously attended a "classical music recital". One also might well ask what is "working-class music" and, indeed, why Chopin's Nocturnes - many if not all of which probably first saw the light of day in fashionable Parisian salons not knowingly frequented by members of the "working class" - might be deemed to fall within such a category. Anyway, why go to a piano recital expecting to hear any of these works when none were advertised as being on the programme? In the meantime, in order to try to please this gentleman (though I use the term unwisely, no doubt), I must perhaps try to persuade Jonathan Powell to learn Alan Bush's piano sonatas in order that he can in future provide music on his programmes that at least some might construe, rightly or wrongly, to possess some sort of "working class" connections or connotations. Or is somone having someone on here?! If not, one (or at least I) can only be thankful that this gentleman at least paid for his ticket. I don't know if he stayed for the second half, but it surely represents at least some kind of tribute to his efforts that he did stay long enough to listen to the entire first half, which must have been around an hour in duration...

Best,

Alistair

Unless he can't read, of course (or should I have written "unless he is literarily challenged"?)...

I've never heard it put quite like that before(!)...

So, I think, did most people!

It's a pity that a prior engagement elsewhere prevented John White from attending.

Best,

Alistair

Well, I've been pondering this one for a wee while now and I've come up with - well, er, something which might be a very long shot but, once you've read it, you might like to confirm whether or not it accords to what you thought. If you indeed substitute a B for your opening note C and then substitute a B flat for your last E flat, you have the notes in question in my piece (a figure which occurs elsewhere in it, too); the harmony that coincides with that last note B flat actually contains an E flat, which may be why you might have thought the E flat to be the melody note, so if you assume that indeed it IS the melody note (are you still awake?!), you'd have the four-note figure B (natural) rising to B flat then falling to G and then to E flat - which doesn't come from Verklärte Nacht in any case but from the same composer's Pelleas und Melisande! (and, as you've surely guessed by now, I'd not noticed it before you mentioned it). Now if that ain't abstruse, I don't know what is! I hope that it solves the problem, anyway (and I'm sure you'll tell me if it doesn't!)...

Best,

Alistair