Metamorphosis II
for piano

Metamorphosis II was commissioned by the Arthur Rubinstein International Music Society as a set piece for The 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition (2008).

"Metamorphosis II examines, in a way, the most resonant intervals - the perfect octave and the perfect fifth. These first two intervals of the overtone series were almost banned by the strictest followers of atonal and serial music. Their extreme stand was partly due to their reaction against the excessive use of octaves in the Romantic piano literature and partly because the fifth as a delimited interval defined the major and the minor chords, representing the tonal/modal system they sought to abolish. The use of these inherently consonant and stable intervals went against the sentiments of an epoch that sanctified dissonance instability.

"The very attributes mentioned above are those which attract my creative imagination and appeal to my musical sensibility. I like the very fact that these intervals are so sonorous, and their use seems to me very idiomatic and natural for the piano.

"The very different, even contrasting moods of the consequent movements conceal the fact that they all share the basic musical material which undergoes far reaching changes - in short, a metamorphosis." 

Menachem Wiesenberg