... rhapsodic and energetic in an appealing and individual style.

— Andrew Roberts, Clarinet and Saxophone Magazine, UK

Richard Dudas

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano

Richard Dudas’ Sonata For Clarinet and Piano is a substantial 3-movement work written for clarinet and piano on equal footing. It is included on the U.K. label Clarinet Classics release “TIME PIECES: 60 Years of American Music” featuring clarinetist Peter Furniss and pianist David Leiher-Jones.

Program Note

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano is dedicated to all my clarinetist friends, from A to Z, from those wondrous years at the Liszt Ferenc Zeneművészeti Főiskola in Budapest and at the University of California, Berkeley:

Adrian, David, Jutta, Lajos, Peter, Rane, Susanna, Zsuzsa

The first movement is cast formally as a traditional sonata movement, although harmonically it makes forays into key centers quite remote from its structural centers of gravity, based on D♭. The second movement is a contemplative aria for the clarinet with a hint of that mid-20^th century “Americana” feel. In spite of its apparent modal harmony, it is primarily dodecaphonic writing! The third movement is a playful rondo, owing more to the rondeaux of Couperin and earlier instrumental consort music (in particular the dance music of the Renaissance, with its myriad syncopations, hemiola and polyrhythms) than to the usual 19^th century rondo.