Anthony Plog

Sonata

After it's premiere performance by Ray and Jeanne Sasaki, I waited approximately seven years to revise this Sonata for trumpet and piano. The playing of Ray and Jeanne was all a composer could hope for, but I felt as though the piece needed a lot of work before it could be published. I think that waiting such a long time before doing the final revisions on the piece enabled me to decide in which direction I needed to go with some of the main ideas and themes. But the basic structure of the piece remains as it was with the first performance - a celebratory first movement which ends quietly, a somber, lonely and introverted second movement, a playful third movement which uses celeste instead of piano to provide a color contrast, and an energetic allegro molto as a final movement.
Anthony Plog,, January 2011, Freiburg. i. Br., Germany