Richard Wernick

Sonata No. 3

Richard Wernick's third piano sonata begins as a musical outgrowth of his first; what functioned as the fading away of the earlier work is now the impetus for a whole new piece, with its first movement titled '. . . a coda completed. ' The second movement is just plain fun,'The Sunken Synagogue - with a Fiddler on the Roof' referencing Debussy's The Sunken Cathedral, its piety interrupted by bits of scherzo-like 'fiddling' perhaps more inspired by Chagall than by Tevye. The third movement, 'Bits and Pieces,' takes fragments from the prior movements and develops them in fresh ways.