SOMERS SONATA PENTAD 2026
Five Composers; Five Premieres: One Truly Canadian Legacy.
Harry Somers wrote five piano sonatas over his lifetime. In 2026, Piano Lunaire presents the complete cycle and what’s more: we are commissioning five living Canadian composers to write new companion works, one for each sonata. Five world premiere “nanoSONATA’s” presented in Toronto and Montreal. This project creates a living dialogue between past, present and the future of music in Canada.
With a particular focus on Canada’s musical heritage, Piano Lunaire has launched the centennial-based Somers Sonata Pentad Project in 2026, highlighting the piano sonatas of Harry Somers, one of Canada’s most important composers and a foundational voice in the development of this country’s own musical lineage. We celebrate Somers’ legacy through performances of his five sonatas, alongside five newly commissioned companion works by living Canadian composers. These world premieres will honour Canada’s musical heritage while contributing to the new repertory for future generations of artists and audiences.
Events and Tickets
As a prelude event to the Toronto premiere of the SOMERS SONATA PENTAD on October 15th, we welcome Piano Lunaire audiences to the nanoSTAGE for a roundtable on composer Harry Somers and his five-sonata cycle for piano. Drs. Brian Cherney and Robin Elliott join us alongside former Executive Director of the Canadian Music Centre, Elisabeth Bihl. Assistant CBC Producer Isaac Page moderates the discussion, joined by pianists and composers.
Programme and Artists
Sonata No 1 "Testament of Youth (1945):
Somers wrote his first Sonata shortly after being discharged from the military at the close of World War II. He dedicated it to his friend who was killed in action. In the Sonata we hear bells tolling for the lost, guns blasting, and a relentless march to oblivion.
David Potvin
Pianist
“Harry Somers was just 20 years old when he wrote his first Sonata...It is remarkable how mature Somers's artistic voice was at this early age.”
Keiko Devaux
Composer
"In response to the tolling bells I explore the complex, alive, and long resonating various bells of my Japanese-Canadian's Buddhist upbringing and traditions. Both honouring those who have passed."
Adam Sherkin
Pianist
"[Sonata 2] has posed particular challenges for my own pianism, in its variety of textures and technical heights to be scaled, from the most intimate moments in the opening movement to the spacious and dexterous third, not to mention the deft, crystal-clear passage-work in the second movement."
Alison Yun-Fei Jiang
Composer
"Sutra II reframes Somers’ materials through the lens of the Diamond Sutra. Paul Harrison’s translation of the Sanskrit text evokes the fleeting nature of all conditioned things: “A shooting star, a clouding of the sight, a lamp, / an illusion, a drop of dew, a bubble, / a dream, a lightning’s flash, a thunder cloud— / This is the way one should see the conditioned.” Sutra II meditates on this impermanence, transforming borrowed fragments into transient, shimmering reflections."
Sonata No. 2 (1946): In many ways a continuation of Sonata No. 1, Somers experiments with a slow opening movement and an early essay in his iconic "scherzo" writing at the keyboard. This second sonata is capacious, emotionally dynamic and ultimately ambitious in its sonic palette and vasty harmonic language.
Lily Koslow
Composer
"Through the addition of electronics, I wanted to create a piano piece that meditates on the pitch materials from Somers’ Sonata No. 3, placing it within an ‘alien’ electroacoustic environment that reframes his musical voice through a contemporary lens."
Gabrielle Gagnon-Picard
Pianist
"Playful, shocking, and unapologetically energetic. That's how I would describe the soul of the third piano sonata! It's a virtuosic beast in many ways, but it also holds a childlike, sarcastic humour that oscillates between light and dark, like Somers is trying to work out which part of his inner child is really in control of his narrative."
Sonata No. 3 (1950): Somers wrote his third sonata just after he returned from a year studying in Paris with Darius Milhaud. It shows Somers' explorations with serialism and anticipates the fugues that would define his musical outputs of the 1950's
Sonata No.4 (1950): Written around the same time as sonata no.3, sonata 4 contains a similiar serial language but maintains a distinct connection to a classical model with strong influences from Mozart,
Bryn Blackwood
Pianist
"Somers’s Fourth Piano Sonata has a concentrated sense of purpose within its relatively sparse textures, with great imagination and playfulness animating its lively gestural interplay."
Sonata No.5 (1957): Written much later than the others, Sonata no 5 is also Somers' most modern. In it, he departs from the classical forms present in his first 4 sonatas in favor of a more fully atonal, gestural language.
Saman Shahi
Composer
"In his 5th piano sonata, Somers is very judicious in developing his melodic material – almost Beethoven-esque - and is also keenly aware of the density of texture throughout each movement. "Silhouette River" creates a parallel piece where some of his melodic and textural techniques are mirrored but using a slightly more lush and neo-romantic musical aesthetic. This piece can be placed before, during or after any of the movements of this sonata."
Stephanie Chua
Pianist
"I studied and performed [Sonata 5] back in 2006 at my first all-contemporary solo recital at the Music Gallery. I love the breadth of moods and characters Somers is able to extract and develop through the humble interval of a 2nd."