Edward McGuire: Four Nocturnes [download]

These pieces originated when I wrote ‘Nocturne for Novi Sad’ for Natasa Srdic, who won the Rowena Ferguson Memorial Piano Competition in Edinburgh, as she left home again after travelling from Novi Sad in Yugoslavia during the NATO bombing of her city. She had rehearsed in between air-raids which demolished the Danube bridges near her home.

I then wrote ‘Nocturnes; for McFall’s Chamber, creating three more piano nocturnes on the same subject, which I developed for string quintet and piano. Now I have brought all four nocturnes together into one set for solo piano.

The Four Nocturnes were specially brought together, with newly composed endings for three of them, for the Glasgow Competitive Music Festival, 2001.