ballade for florian

Although ballade for florian was written in 2005, by which time Reddy was mostly composing directly in Sibelius software, he sketched many ideas out in pencil on manuscript paper, prior to typesetting it. These autograph pages, which are in the Surendran Reddy Archive, show how the work was developed from short phrases and chordal and rhythmic patterns into a long piece. It is dedicated to tabla player Florian Schiertz, with whom Reddy often worked, and what Reddy does in this fascinating and breathtakingly difficult piano piece is use the rhythmic and tonal elements he learned from Florian and from Indian classical music generally. He expects players to be somewhat familiar with Indian tala, and also with African rhythms, especially in the passages that require improvisation. In short, this is a piece where the player has to be as at home with jazz, classical music, Indian and African music, as Reddy himself was.

He left 26 Sibelius files of the work, the last complete version being dated 25 October 2005, and that is the score published here, with a more spacious layout than in Reddy’s score for clarity of reading, but with all Reddy’s markings. In the recording below, Reddy and Schiertz play ballade for florian  as a piano-tabla duo.