| info@scb.org

Piano soloist/composer

WINGS

Piet Swerts (b. 1960) was trained for a musical career in his native land, Belgium. He is a working pianist and conductor as well as a composer and teacher. Swerts has had a long association with the University of Leuven as a faculty member. He lists among his compositions an opera, oratorio, music for television, material for orchestras, chamber ensembles, band, choral groups, and various kinds of solos: voice, piano, organ, guitar, violin, cello, bassoon and saxophone. As composer, he has won numerous prizes including the 1993 Grand Prix Internationale Reine Elisabeth.

Wings is a piano concerto in three movements: a large opening movement featuring virtuosic displays by the pianist, a slow, true romance for a middle movement, and a more brilliant last movement. You can see the concerto as three sound landscapes through which you seem to float. Wings also represents the collective name for everything that has to do with keyboard instruments (the Dutch word for wing also means grand piano). This reflects the composer's love for the piano, organ, harpsichord, harmonium, celesta, and synthesizer. And, last but not least, it is also a wink at the family name of the commissioner of this piece, professor Arthur Vleugels (whose last name is the Dutch word for wings).