Nelson Walker

Sonata for Oboe and Piano
-2020-
oboe, piano (ca. 20")

I - Fantasia
II - Nocturne
III - Finale

Sonata for Oboe and Piano​ was composed in July and August of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece serves to document the uncertainty and tumult of the times, expressing moments of profound hope, as well as moments of deep longing and episodes of rage and grief.

Fantasia​ draws heavily from an older work, ​Embark​, written in 2018, also for Grace. The first movement of ​Embark​ deals with themes of hope and longing, and ​Fantasia​ further develops these ideas, while contrasting it with newly composed material. The movement never spends too much time in the hopeful place before the other material seems to interrupt with some ill-humored joke.

Nocturne​ is perhaps the most intimate and vulnerable of the three movements. The music begins with a lonely, quiet tune in the piano, a tune hummed to oneself in the dead of night. This gives way to a glimmer of hope, a sparkling crystal illuminating the dark. Very quickly, however, the light pales and dims, the darkness rises like water and recedes again, leaving only void in its wake. The movement explores this conflict between loneliness, hope, and despair, finding itself approaching the edge of sanity before resigning itself to a quiet loneliness.

Finale​ is the most fractured and intense movement of the sonata. The hopeful theme from the first movement is corrupted in a low, slow introduction before the music is thrust into a blazing, unpredictable sprint, where it stays for most of the movement. A more relaxed middle section gives some small respite from the torrent of the movement, but before too long the music has built back up to an exhausting peak again. By the end of the piece, just when the music can build no longer, the music suddenly breaks and gives way to a coda in slow-motion, with glittering shards of glass spiraling and dancing in the darkness, drifting off into space.