Listen & tracks

70 works · 78:05

1 The Theme: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (TTLS) Traditional :41
2 Ah, vous dirai-je maman Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1:09
3 Retrograde Canon XU Mengdong :57
4 The Ride of the Little Star Michael Kieran Harvey :44
5 Star Trail Elliott Gyger :36
6 A Peculiar Bird QIN Wenchen 1:15
7 Sleepy Star Brenton Broadstock 2:13
8 Choleric Variation on TTLS David DeBoor Canfield :47
9 Bagatelle for Aksel Stuart Greenbaum 2:09
10 Ballad for Guitar Xiao HU 2:10
11 Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star Ferry Matthew Orlovich 1:18
12 Stellar Fancy David Keeffe :40
13 Thelonius Monk Mari Takano :53
14 Ma Mère, J’Te Kiffe Trop Grave Jean-Pierre Vial 1:16
15 Impression of Australian Grassland LU Pei 1:38
16 Contemplation on a Dwarf Star Courtney Williams 1:41
17 Star Sprint Susan Wood :42
18 Miniature Etude: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Joanie Chung Yee LEE :47
19 Back to Ancient China HU Haipeng 1:04
20 Dance of the Golden Snake LIN Tong :59
21 Dozing Off LI Qianyun :51
22 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: Starlight Variation Richard Pressley :36
23 Twinkle Fifth Denis Feletto 1:09
24 TTLS Chromatic bass Andrew D. Herring 1:12
25 Autunno Lidio Salvatore Cirillo 1:39
26 Variation for piano on the theme of TTLS SHI Ziwei :54
27 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in a Greek Dancing Way Sylvia Triantafyllou :48
28 Kiss ZHANG Yanpeng 3:00
29 VeYeBe … where the stars twinkle Krisna Setiawan 1:09
30 Twinkle the Greek Xaralambos Nabrozidis :38
31 Starry Night (by the lake) Hyekyung Lee :39
32 Variation on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Jonathan Galton :38
33 Twinkle Twinkle Little Samba Star Carole Quaife :35
34 Song of the Stars: A loose pop variation of TTLS Jia Jie Chen :58
35 How I Wondered Gareth Rhys Jones 1:01
36 5/8 Twinkle Thanos Yakas :42
37 372. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Louis Johnson 1:28
38 Wonderland PAN Minya :57
39 Shimmering and Sparks Pat Hanchet :51
40 Black Star Tyler Minshew 1:15
41 Hong Kong Dominik Gajdoš 1:20
42 Variation on TTLS (Nuno Peixoto de Pinho) Nuno Peixoto de Pinho :48
43 Anton Little Boogie Antanas Kučinskas :26
44 Kabuki of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Yu KUWABARA :32
45 Twinkling Tom Armitage 2:15
46 Variation on TTLS (Cavestany) Rafael Cavestany :47
47 Variation: Song Jeffrey Edenberg :33
48 Twelve Stars Clarence ZHANG :44
49 Una variazione spettrale sul tema TTLS Paweł Siek 1:21
50 Seven Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star CHU Wanghua 2:22
51 TTLS: a variation for two hands André Luiz Greboge :42
52 Prelude in D Minor Alexander Krasnopolsky :38
53 Twinkling Light LIU Zhifeng :29
54 Where has the Little Star Been? PENG Cheng 1:03
55 The twinkle stars whisper to the moon Man-ngai Tang 1:45
56 Variation on TTLS (Oskolkov) Sergei Oskolkov :36
57 Russian Song and Dance on TTLS Michael Roitershtein 1:44
58 Variation on the theme of TTLS (Evgeny Petrov) Evgeny Petrov :59
59 Infinite Song Ross James Carey 1:58
60 Then the traveller in the dark Kym Dillon 1:20
61 Variation on TTLS (Panchenko) Elizaveta Panchenko :43
62 Twinkle Little Sichuan Opera SONG Mingzhu :57
63 Night Song ZHAO Xi 1:56
64 Twinkle Twinkle Icy Stars Martine Wengrow 1:30
65 Fallen Star Anthony Lyons 1:17
66 Space Travel to the Twinkling Stars Ada Nga-Ting LAI :38
67 Like a Diamond Vaughan McAlley 1:05
68 Little Star Over the Hall of the Mountain King Marion Gray :34
69 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (Satoshi Tanaka) Satoshi TANAKA 1:39
70 Scintillation: Scintle, Scintle, Little Star Julian Yu :45

Every composer has responded with good humour and imagination. This second volume gathers seventy short piano variations from composers around the world, a companion to the earlier 126 Variations on “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

Harvey recorded the set at Move Records’ studio between April and June 2014.

In the artist’s words

The popularity of my piano album The Young Person’s Guide to Composition: Variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” inspired me to compile a second volume of variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, this time from composers around the world. My international call for scores has brought forth an enthusiastic response from composers old and young, professional and amateur, experimental and conservative, and the pieces they have submitted, presented here for your enjoyment, are delightfully diverse.

I would like to thank my good friend, composer and pianist Michael Kieran Harvey, who volunteered several days of his time to record them all. His talent for bringing manuscripts to life is second to none. Enjoy!

— Julian Yu

In the pursuit of some misguided personal Parnassus, I used to torture audiences with excruciatingly long performances of solo piano playing. Having endured a particularly longwinded recital I gave of a renowned cycle of sacred French pianistic pomposity, a beloved family member was able to reduce her impressions of the work to: “You know, it reminds me of Three Blind Mice teeheehee”. She was absolutely right; and cured me of any pretensions that music could ever have any transcendent, “spiritual” meaning or significance, apart from pandering to the prosaic and pitiful human yearning for nostalgia and connection in a world gone stark raving bonkers.

Like “Three Blind Mice”, “TTLS” is another famous popular melody which has fascinated and irritated composers through the ages. In this wonderful collection Julian Yu has assembled a staggeringly diverse cornucopia of stylistic arrangements of the tune. The unpretentious nature of the nursery rhyme belies some pretty surprising musical outcomes.

In preparing the CD of the book I can attest to the unique challenges each of the pieces presented to my ageing brain and fingers, and to the very strong candidacy the melody has for “Greatest Earworm Of All Time” status. The compositional treatments range from the supreme virtuosity of those by Gyger, Orlovich and Canfield to the humorousness of Yu, Johnson, and Kučinskas; from the familiar quotidian inflections of Jia Jie Chen, Quaife and Pan Minya, to the indigenously-influenced Hu Haipeng, Lin Tong, Roitershtein and Triantafyllou; from the sheer beauty of Lyons, Zhang Yanpeng and Siek, to the out-and-out weirdness of Tang, Dillon and Clarence Zhang.

The absurdity of the challenge to each composer from every part of the globe to focus their talents on such a restricted common task is fascinating – the results range from the frivolous to the frenetic, the fragile to the fragrant, the popular to the profound. Every composer has responded with good humour and imagination … I don’t know if life gets much better than this.

This collection can be dipped into at random, used as teaching aids, radio fillers for nervous public broadcasters, encores for professional pianists bored with their traditional repertoire but too timid to play anything modern, and young wunderkinds looking for a new book to devour. But I have genuine concerns about the long-term health effects of playing it through in one sitting …

— Michael Kieran Harvey

Artists

Julian Yu

composer

Julian Yu is a multi-award-winning Australian composer whose musical language is imbued with elegance and expressiveness, both enhanced by impeccable craft and a special attention to detail.

Michael Kieran Harvey

piano

Australian pianist and composer Dr Michael Kieran Harvey FAHA is among the foremost interpreters of contemporary piano music of his generation. A champion of Australian music, he regularly commissions new work and has performed with the country’s leading contemporary ensembles and orchestras.

Brenton Broadstock

composer

Brenton Broadstock is one of Australia’s most established, respected and successful mid-generation composers. Over several decades he has built a substantial, varied catalogue distinguished by expressive range, structural assurance and strong engagement with performers and audiences, nationally and internationally.

Stuart Greenbaum

composer

Stuart Greenbaum’s sound has overt connections to jazz, pop and minimalism, yet is equally grounded in the Western art music tradition, across a large body of orchestral, chamber, choral and stage works.

Elliott Gyger

composer

Elliott Gyger was born in Sydney, and has been writing music since about the age of ten. His compositional and research interests include the creation of a purely musical sense of drama and narrative, and the multilayered interplay of music and text.

Vaughan McAlley

composer

Vaughan McAlley is a composer and arranger, alto and tenor, a capable flautist and French horn player, and the recording engineer behind countless Move releases.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He wrote over 600 works, many of them pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic and choral music, and remains among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Tom Armitage

composer

David DeBoor Canfield

composer

Ross James Carey

composer

Rafael Cavestany

composer

Jia Jie Chen

composer

PENG Cheng

composer

Salvatore Cirillo

composer

Kym Dillon

composer

Jeffrey Edenberg

composer

Denis Feletto

composer

Dominik Gajdoš

composer

Jonathan Galton

composer

Marion Gray

composer

André Luiz Greboge

composer

HU Haipeng

composer

Pat Hanchet

composer

Andrew D. Herring

composer

Xiao HU

composer

Louis Johnson

composer

Gareth Rhys Jones

composer

David Keeffe

composer

Alexander Krasnopolsky

composer

Antanas Kučinskas

composer

Yu KUWABARA

composer

Ada Nga-Ting LAI

composer

Joanie Chung Yee LEE

composer

Hyekyung Lee

composer

Anthony Lyons

composer

XU Mengdong

composer

SONG Mingzhu

composer

Tyler Minshew

composer

PAN Minya

composer

Xaralambos Nabrozidis

composer

Matthew Orlovich

composer

Matthew Orlovich's sacred choral writing is deeply satisfying in originality and function, while chamber works such as Whirled Music spin classical, Latin, African and jazz colours into taut, vivid forms.