Lucy Escott Variations

World premiere March 21st 1965

Berlin

Harpsichord Klaus Billing

This homage to the coloratura soprano Lucy Escott (London, c.1820) consists of a number of variations, merging one into another, of the aria “Come a me sereno” from the first act of Bellini’s “Sonnambula”. The piano writing is cast in a romantic style with an impassioned, pointedly outmoded expression, explained not only by the tonal properties of the theme, which naturally affect the whole harmonic life of these varia- tions, but also by its specific, incomparably Classical Sicilian atmosphere.

Hans Werner Henze