Version for lupophone and two pianos: PLP (2003/rev. 2011)
Due to its fundamentally utopian conception, it took 8 years after its composition for PHP to be premiered. The initial idea for the piece came to me in a flash: a solo heckelphone (a prototypical postromantic instrument) is 'trapped' between two virtuoso, sometimes hyperactive, pianos. While the heckelphone plays its plaintive, ornemented melodic lines, the pianos take turns providing a thick continuum of notes, which is interrupted from time to time by fortissimo chords in the low register. This non-egalitarian situation reaches its apex in a mad cadenza for the pianos. The heckelphone, finding itself 'ejected' from the discourse, falls silent.
The second part of the piece attempts a sort of reconciliation: whereas the figures played are angular, the three instruments share the same harmonic material. The harmony, which is generally static in this section, is animated through means of resonance or timbre. Yet, no form of stability is really achieved: just before the end, the piece suddenly veers off in a completely different direction.