Night & day op. 58a

Program note (English): (Premiere: 2-4-1993 - Int. Accordion Celebration - Park Plaza Hotel, Ontario - Duo Novair). The ideas for this piece arose during my stay in Darmstadt in the summer of 1992. Every day I crossed the city centre several times by tram on the way from the hotel to the concert hall and back. I observed the calm of the night and the movements of the day. In 'Night & Day', as in many of my compositions, I strive for simplicity by making use of basic material: fifths and fourths in the pensive opening (night).

Thereafter follows a 'dance' of the dominant and subdominant around a kind of tonic, out of which melodic and rhythmic shapes parade past in all sorts of variations. The two instruments here enter into a dialogue which finally dissolves into the sonority of the beginning (the lovely low registers of the bass clarinet and the accordion).(JACOB TER VELDHUIS)