Carl Vine, Australian composer of the middle generation, first made his name as the author of vivacious dancing music, exhibiting a penchant for fantastic rhythm and expressive musical gesture. Blessed with a piano education, he then turned to musical genres for the instrument, all the while using his former experience.
His First Piano Sonata was composed for eminent Australian pianist Michael Kieran Harvey, who premiered it in Melbourne in 1991. It should be mentioned that Harvey performed the very same sonata when he won the Grand Prize of the Ivo Pogorelich International Piano Festival in Pasadena in 1993.
Vine’s Sonata No. 1 was written in 1990. It consists of two complementary movements, Lento and Leggiero e legato. The composer’s love of complec rhythmic structures manifests itself at the very beginning of the piece. The musical material presented in the introduction is then presented in varying conditions of harmony, texture, and colour. The listener who follows the drama of the piece is drawn into its play with conventions of genre and style of 20th-century piano culture.

Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz