In this short piano work stylistic surfaces from several time periods overlay an essential sameness of gestural language. Like in a painting, colors morph constantly from bright diatonic sonorities to hard dissonance and back, gestures form and dissolve quickly into one another, from percussive jabs to soft, ringing stasis. Familiar objects come into view briefly, only to recede back into the clouds of resonance, and linear narrative is suppressed in favor of elemental contrast, the only guiding principle being a search for color, bright light and diffuse beauty.
Paysages abstraits was commissioned by the Sibelius Academy for the Maj Lind International Piano Competition.