Peter Garland (1952-)
After the Wars (2007-08)

Sarah Cahill

After the Wars, a resonant, sometimes clangorous four-movement piano solo performed by new-music champion Sarah Cahill, displays a unique sense of grace and a sincerity of expression that is quite simply Garlandesque. Garland writes about the music: “Each of the transparent and self-contained movements takes as inspiration a Chinese poem or Japanese haiku…. I explore the quality of resonance in the piano: not just the notes played on the keyboard, but the sense of echo and fade produced by a very deliberate use of pedaling, and the sustaining and release of piano keys after notes and chords are sounded. It creates a sense of timbral color and acoustic perspective…. Each movement is like a single image, simply stated with relatively little temporal or thematic development….” (20-minute CD single, in four-panel wallet)