I composed Anamnisis (Greek for ‘memories’) after reading the Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. The title recalls the way in which the narrator in the novel embarks on his tale of twenty years past only after his memory is sparked by hearing a song on an aeroplane. I tried to convey the sense of memory in Anamnisis by using the opening 5-note melody as a kind of recurrent yet ever varying leitmotif in the rest of the piece not to be heard, but to lend the work unity.
First performance: June 2003, Birmingham Conservatoire, Bik Kei Lo, piano.