Toccata Chromatica

Ad Wammes (1953) studied composition with Ton de Leeuw, Theo Loevendie and Klaas de Vries, piano with Edith Lateiner-Grosz and electronic music with Ton Bruynèl.
He played keyboards with the symphonic rockgroup Finch.
Between 1983 and 1985 he wrote the music for 5 Sesame Street albums.
From 1986 to 2002 he realised the music (composing, playing and recording) of 35 serials for TeleacNOT.
In recent years he has concentrated more and more on composing "concert music".
His piece for organ "Miroir" meant his international breakthrough. It is being played all over the world by such renowned organists as Thomas Trotter, David Sanger and John Scott and has already been recorded 9 times on CD. In 2007 Boosey and Hawkes published a reissue.

Toccata Chromatica („Echoes of Sweelinck”) was composed for Minako Tsukatani in 2012. Wammes writes: „As a student I frequently visited the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam where Sweelinck was organist. I performed Fantasia Chromatica, which led to an interesting discussion about historical fingering techniques. One uses only the index finger, middle finger and ring finger. This results in a special kind of phrasing (notes connected to each other are heard as a unity). I decided to give phrasing an important role in the piece by combining phrases of two and three notes, of three and five notes, and of five and eight notes. I have also incorporated the echo effect, frequently used by Sweelinck, the shortest echo being a semiquaver, the longest echo being two bars.”

This piece sounds easy and swinging yet it is exceedingly difficult to play, with double pedal, syncopes etc. So I did my best but it certainly it is not yet perfect. This piece is best suited for midi performance I guess. However, I wanted to introduce this important Dutch contemporary composer to you.