Steve Beresford and I first played as a duo at what was meant to be a Four Pullovers concert. The combination of piano and violin might appear to be an obvious one, but this is not the case. In the early concerts, it never occurred to us for Steve to use a piano instead of his objects, and when finally he did use the instrument we did not consider the fact that composers from Haydn onwards had immense difficulty with the medium. Beethoven went through such traumas at trying to make the instruments blend, marrying the percussive sounds of the piano with the singing qualities of the violin, that he gave up after only ten sonatas. Countless composers have tried since to contrive some kind of homogeneity out of the instruments only to prove that the combination is immitigable.

This, I think, explains why the two instruments on this record sound as if they hate each other. For us to try and surmount Beethoven's problems, for example, in the heat of trying to make the music up as we go along is almost laughable. Rather the music could almost be considered a depiction of his problems at trying to write his ten sonatas.

NIGEL COOMBES (1979)

Track listing

1. White Strings Attached 1
2. White Strings Attached 2
3. White Strings Attached 3

Side A recorded at the London Musicians Collective, 42 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1, England; May 20,1979.
B1 recorded at LMC, March 24, 1979.

B2
An excerpt from a second piece recorded on May 20, at the LMC, by Toop and Eastley.
Whistles and a bowed gopi drum are used briefly.

All recordings were made on a Sony TC158SD cassette recorder, with two A.K.G. D224 microphones.
Dedicated to Joseph Szigeti and Chic.

Released 1980

BEAD 16