Berceuse Fantasque

Violin and Piano, 1996

A single-movement work for Violin and Piano

Duration: 9′

Publisher: Editions Max Eschig, Paris

On the first page of Lasser’s Berceuse Fantasque for violin and piano there figures the following epigraph: ” …et rêve la berceuse.” (…and dreams the one who sings the lullaby.) The composer writes that his Berceuse Fantasque is as much about the lullaby itself as it is about the one who sings the lullaby. Thus after a tender first section, representing a lullaby sung to a child, we step into the more troubled dream world of the one who just sang the child to sleep. Fears and phantasms rise and fall as we return to the lullaby now heard from within the singer’s heart.

Premiere: Dorota Anderszewska, violin, The Juilliard School 1996

On recordings by Frank Almond, Emile Chudnovsky, Sam Katz, Giora Schmidt