The Art of Touching the Keyboard / Judith Weir (1983)
 

    The title of this music is an over-literal translation of the title of François Couperin’s harpsichord tutor of 1716, L’art de toucher le clavecin. It seemed appropriate for a piece which begins with the player pressing single keys tentatively, as if encountering the instrument for the first time, and ends ten minutes later with the same repeated notes marked “confident and relaxed”. In the interim, the music, which is a single continuous movement, demonstrates the many ways in which the piano keys can be touched, from the gentlest of strokes to the most vicious of blows.
    - Judith Weir

 
   Judith Weir is a British composer, born in 1954. She studied composition with John Tavener and Robin Holloway. Her interest in theatre, narrative and folklore has resulted in three full-length operas (A Night at the Chinese Opera, The Vanishing Bridegroom and Blond Eckbert) and collaborations with the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Peter Hall Company. Among artists and ensembles commissioning works from her recently are Jessye Norman; Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO orchestra; the Minnesota Orchestra; and the London Sinfonietta. From 1995 to 1998 she was the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's resident composer and from 1995 to 2000 she was the Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival in London. Although much of her recent work has been for large forces, piano chamber music lies at the heart of her oeuvre, most of it written for personal friends to play.