Emerald Crossing - Ross Edwards

Emerald Crossing (1999)

for piano quartet

Ross Edwards

As I composed Emerald Crossing I was haunted by an image of a canoe propelled slowly across clear green water - a lagoon? - towards an island.

You might say it's a sort of antipodean barcarolle, mysterious (though not at all lugubrious) and probably symbolic at an unconscious level. I had a feeling that some kind of ritual was being enacted and this is enhanced by the inexorable rhythm in the left hand of the piano.

Emerald Crossing was composed especially for the Australian Piano Quartet, who commissioned it with Australia Council assistance.