toccata à la mode for mol(l)-in-a

Like most of Reddy’s other late solo piano works, this one is long and extremely difficult if not impossible to play; more conceptual art than piano piece, but very much in his ‘clazz’ vein with liberal quotes, especially from J.S. Bach. His direction at the beginning of the score reads: ‘Piano (preferably 4 a pianist with 5/6 hands – at least 😉 ) and 2 left feet ;)’ and there are many similar instructions that are perhaps more for reading – as in Satie – than following; and as for the metronome marks, e.g. quaver=187.5, forget it, Sir Rendran. But the piece is fun, and with the aid of a tongue firmly in the cheek, players might get through all 629 bars and be able to read the(ir) epilogue, which was written at 02h18 (a.m.) on Sunday 28th of January 2007. The final Sibelius file of the work, however, is dated 17 May 2007.

As with clazz etude no. 3 for philipp, the present score reproduces one of the printouts that Reddy and his partner, Heike Asmuss made, under their imprint, ‘Dorothy Publications’, which has a colourful front cover, used here with Heike’s kind permission. The dedication takes up almost the whole first page of the score with lots of play on the name Isabel Molina, who was a great friend of Reddy’s, and on ‘moll’ as a German musical word meaning ‘minor’. The first page of the final Sibelius score is shown on the right, and an audio file made from the Sibelius score by Reddy on 26 June 2007 is given below.