Bryan Kelly

2 Concert Pieces

Elegy and Impromptu.

Two Concert Pieces for bassoon and piano were written for Kerry Camden. Their titles - Elegy and Impromptu - reflect their strikingly different moods. In the Elegy, the piano plays a funeral march, a solemn and repeated two-bar rhythmic pattern, over which flows the bassoon's legato melody. The central section is more animated, bassoon and piano sharing similar melodic phrases, sometimes in canon. The movement ends as it began, with the funereal themes dying away to pianissimo. The Impromptu is a sharply accented and vigorous piece, in which the piano's interjections offset the bassoon's phrases. Again there is a contrasting central section, creating a more legato effect over a rocking quaver movement in the piano.