Sonatina for Trombone and Piano
The Sonatina for trombone and piano, composed in 1954, is perhaps Kazimierz Serocki’s most frequently played work.
The Sonatina earned popularity and recognition among performers also because its composer displayed a thorough knowledge of the instrument to which he entrusted the leading role. This work was written, like the Trombone Concerto and the Suite for four trombones, as a result of Serocki’s close collaboration with the outstanding trombone virtuoso Juliusz Pietrachowicz, who demonstrated the instrument’s capabilities and limitations to the composer. Serocki put that knowledge to masterful use, enriching the trombone repertoire with an exceptional, timeless work. He was not averse to setting lofty technical and expressive challenges before performers. The rapid staccato and leggiero playing required in the first movement (Allegro) appears to contradict the nature of the trombone, rather predestined for loud, dignified playing. In the second movement (Andante molto sostenuto), the composer compensated for those difficulties, as it were, creating for the performer a more comfortable situation – an opportunity for fluent and expressive playing within an arching ternary formal plan. In the last movement (Allegro vivace), he returned to the idea of light playing, at the same time making use of a kind of trombone ‘speciality’: glissandos between two notes. Throughout this work, a significant role is played by the changing metre, pulse and dynamics. It is also marked by refined chordal writing, attesting to the composer’s experiments in musical language, which frees itself from the strictures of the major–minor system. One also notes here the rather coarse sense of humour typical of Serocki.
Iwona Lindstedt
- Series: Strumento
- ISMN 979-0-2740-0651-8
- Language of edition: eng, pol
- Number of pages: 24
- Cover: softcover
- No. of edition: 14
- Published: 2024
- Type: solo part (instrumental) + accompaniment
- Size: N4 vertical (235x305 mm)
