Sea Sketches

Nicola LeFanu

2007

Clarinet, piano

Sea Sketches for clarinet and piano is a suite of ten little fantasy pieces. They are played without breaks to make a piece of about ten minutes. As the title might suggest, some are stormy, some are calm; but even the briefest movements capture, I hope, the ceaseless movement of waves and water. The players are sometimes in close duet, and at other times their parts are independent. I use piano resonance, and the full register of the clarinet, to suggest the spaciousness of the sea and the sky above.

Sea Sketches was composed for Peter Sparks and Matthew Schellhorn, who gave the first performance in January 2008.

-Nicola LeFanu