ONE-MINUTE WONDERS by Stephen Goss

The One-Minute Wonders project originated from a challenge that Clive Williamson set to all the student composers at the University of Surrey. He requested ‘newly composed complete pieces for piano lasting no more than one minute’. He set a strict deadline for the delivery of fully edited scores and gave the first One-Minute Wonders concert on 28th January 2004. The concert was a huge success. Pauline Johnson, artistic director of the Guildford International Music Festival, suggested that the project should be expanded for the 2005 festival. Clive’s response was to commission a large number of professional composers who were asked to work to the same precise brief.  The Guildford Festival concert featured 23 first performances and received excellent reviews. Anthony Payne, writing in Country Life, commented that ‘it is no mean feat to achieve a satisfying musical structure within the space of one minute, and most of the pieces succeeded remarkably well. Whether through creating an illusion of space by developing a single musical cell, or by compressing a number of conflicting ideas into the short time available, each one distorted our sense of passing time, often giving the impression of lasting longer than its allotted minute.’
The One-Minute Wonders project is ongoing with more recent manifestations at the Universities of Cardiff and Manchester. Future plans include projects that involve other solo instruments.  

The pieces recorded on the CD released by Cadenza Music present a microcosm of the eclectic new music scene in the UK today. The stylistic diversity of the set and the highly contrasting strategies that composers have chosen, make for fascinating comparison. There are dense, complex pieces (such as Michael Finnissy’s One-Minute Wonder) and others of startling simplicity (like Julian Anderson’s Old Bells). Some composers have increased the restrictions placed upon them; Katherine Norman’s piece (which recalls a hitch-hiking episode from her youth) demands that Clive only uses his thumbs and fists to execute the piece. Others have written highly concentrated pieces that compress an enormous amount of music into the sixty-second time frame; an extreme example is Matthew King’s Sonatas which manages to quote from all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in chronological order.

In December 2006 the entire project was released at a launch recital given by Clive Williamson in London. Not only did this event feature new pieces from such composers as Michael Finnissy, Tansy Davies, John Woolrich and others, but the pieces were all published (in two volumes) by Cadenza Music, and a CD was released of Clive's performances of all the pieces in the set.

The CD has already received great acclaim: ClassicalSource.com described it as "excellently performed, recorded and annotated, and recommended to prospective performers and listeners alike."

The published collection has received similarly glowing recommendations: International Piano magazine called it " an exciting series of contemporary bagatelles.... extremely inspiring, and it deserves a strong recommendation not only for the tremendous variety on offer, but also for the unquestionable high quality of the pieces." Piano Teacher magazine called it "genuinely valuable and resourceful".

To purchase the two volumes of piano pieces and the CD please follow the Cadenza Music link on the left.