Milking Darkness for Piano

For solo piano

Milking Darkness

for Piano

A ten-minute solo piano work commissioned for the ARD Music Competition 2011.

Year 2011
Duration 10′
Scoring Solo
Piano
Publisher Boosey & Hawkes
/ Sikorski
Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski Purchase Score Stretta Music Abbreviations PDF

Commission

Commissioned by ARD Music Competition 2011.

Premiere

September 2011. Munich.

Form

  • Milking Darkness

    One-movement work for solo piano.

  • Duration

    Approximately 10 minutes.

  • Competition Work

    Commissioned for the ARD Music Competition 2011.

Work Information

Full Title
Milking Darkness
Scoring
For solo piano.
Year
2011
Duration
10′
Form
One movement.
Instrumentation
Piano solo.
Abbreviations PDF
Commission
Commissioned by ARD Music Competition 2011.
Premiere
September 2011 · Munich.
Publisher
Published by Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski .
Score
SIK 8694.
Availability
Score available for purchase through Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski.

The Work

Milking Darkness is a solo piano work written in 2011 for the ARD Music Competition. It belongs to Auerbach’s catalogue of concentrated piano works in which image, physical gesture and psychological atmosphere are inseparable.

The title suggests an impossible act: drawing nourishment, sound or light from darkness. As a competition work, it also functions as a test of pianistic imagination, requiring not only virtuosity, but the ability to shape contrast, resonance and tension into a coherent dramatic span.

A ten-minute piano work that treats darkness not as absence, but as a material to be drawn, sounded and transformed.
  • Form One-movement solo piano work.
  • Duration Approximately 10 minutes.
  • Forces Solo piano.

Context

The work was commissioned for the 2011 ARD Music Competition, one of the major international music competitions. As a competition piece, it was designed to reveal not only technical command, but the pianist’s capacity to inhabit a contemporary musical language with imagination and authority.

Within Auerbach’s piano catalogue, Milking Darkness belongs to a group of concentrated solo works in which image, gesture and psychological intensity are compressed into a single dramatic span.

Online Materials

Public links related to Milking Darkness. Recordings and streaming links are grouped here only; the main work information above remains limited to the work itself.

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Publisher and Materials

Published by Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski. The score is available through the official Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski purchase page. Rental material has been intentionally omitted because this is a solo piano work available for purchase.