Frank Corcoran

Nowadays I divide my time between Hamburg and Italy. That´s correct. In the main. However, one of the strangest electro-acoustic works I made ( – they´re all in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris ) was
that WDR commission, ” QUASI UNA MISSA” , of 1999. The radio´s small Cologne hotel was just across the square from the Cathedral , just behind the Rhine. I´d start the day´s intensive composing early; I mean early: they opened dark doors at six , I remember. Then I´d shuffle down to the still totally deserted banks of the mighty river Rhine. My composer´s day had begun.
The making of my second WDR commission, ” Sweeney´s Vision”, two years before that, was quite different. The light was different in Berlin. His bright Einstein river-bank where the Technical University´s Electronic Studio swives the water, was different. The very Spree was different. April, well, a very different month.
Different again was the hot 2008 London performance of my very ( – well NO! , not ” very!” ) early PIANO TRIO with Darragh Morgan and his great Trio this past July 1 . It was a kind of old London granary. The Warehouse. Wood , no water. My work has stood the tensile toughness of time. Thirty Frank Corcoran years. In London I was invited to remember every detail of having imagined that ( for the pianist´s bleeding fingers ) fiendish opening page for the piano solo where I smashed the tyranny of my bar-line, – but then I had to bring in the cello´s explosione tremolando and , after this furious dialogue got started, a high violin cantilena on a totally other plane, all three moving independently. Fiendish. Memory. My poiesis.
Most recent work for altered double-bass ( – all four strings up, yes, a fourth ) and piano, the 2008 ” Quasi Un Duo” hasn´t been heard in Germany or Ireland. Not yet; great USA ” Duo Moderno” of great Allan von Schenkel premiered it just before Christmas in Bucharest and snowed-in Cluj . Certainly. We will.