Sextet

My Sextet for piano and winds was originally written for piano and string quartet. The first movement is filled with drama and passion. Its atmosphere can be seen to be related to my Second Symphony ‘Johannes Angelos’. The second movement is a set of polyphonic variations reminiscent of a passacaglia. The music seems to be hypnotized by a theme consisting of a chromatic cluster of ten notes. In the last movement, one at a time the winds find a new kind of music resembling fragments of a hymn – at first hesitantly, but soon gaining in strength and confidence. Fast-moving triplets start to appear and the music reaches a joyful and ecstatic conclusion. Olli Mustonen