Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Romanza y Danza de los Muertos (Romance and Dance of the Dead) is a concertante for piano four hands and symphony orchestra. It imagines a liminal afterlife where legendary lovers in musical history-Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and Bernstein's Tony and Maria-are finally free from the sorrows and constraints of mortal life. After the curtain falls on their earthly tragedies, their souls meet again to embrace and to dance, unbound by time, gravity, or physical boundaries.

Musically and extra‑musically, the work resonates with the lineage of Liszt's Totentanz, Saint‑Saëns' Danse Macabre, Mozart's Requiem, and Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. Its harmonic language occasionally evokes the chromatic world of Tristan and Isolde, while its rhythmic drive and coloristic flair nod toward Piazzolla's tangos, the dramatic vibrancy of Leonard Bernstein, and the hauntingly visceral liminality of Silvestre Revueltas.

In essence, the piece asks: what happens after love and tragedy have played their final scene? Perhaps, as the story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet seems to whisper across the centuries, love transcends the mortal stage, lingering luminously beyond time and death.

Romanza y Danza de los Muertos is the first Australian full‑length concertante work for one piano four hands and symphony orchestra, and among the very few works of its kind internationally. This rare format highlights the expressive and virtuosic potential of two pianists sharing a single instrument in dialogue with a full orchestra, making the work a unique contribution to both the Australian and global concert repertoire. In his Classikon.com review, Tony Burke titled his article "Yerim Lee and Daniel Rojas leave WSO audience spellbound", capturing the impact of the world premiere of Romanza y Danza de los Muertos (15 October 2023, The Concourse, Chatswood). He described the performance as a privilege to witness, highlighting the pianists' virtuosic interplay-moving from a driving ground bass to a reflective middle section and a riveting tango finale-supported by the orchestra's colorful percussion, including ratchets, whips, and cowbells. The premiere, he wrote, left the audience thoroughly enthralled and eager for future performances.

Work Details

Year: 2003

Instrumentation: Solo piano four hands, 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B flat (2nd doubling bass clarinet in B flat), 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 2 percussion, strings.

Duration: 16 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Requires pianistic virtuosity on the part of both soloists; orchestral writing accessible to competent symphony orchestras; demands rhythmic precision, ensemble coordination, and confident handling of syncopated passages

Commission note: Commissioned by Willoughby Symphony Orchestra.

First performance: by Willoughby Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Rojas, Yerim Lee — 14 Oct 23.

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:
Styles, Genres, and Influences: Concertante, symphonic work, piano four hands (soloists), Latin American classical fusion, traditional and nuevo tango (Pugliese, Piazzolla), Afro‑Cuban and Afro‑Caribbean dance rhythms (salsa, cha‑cha, mambo, merengue, cumbia), romantic chromaticism (e.g., Liszt), 20th‑century modernism (Revueltas, Bernstein, Herrmann), programmatic and narrative music, dance and death traditions (Danse Macabre, Totentanz), classical‑contemporary hybrid Related Concepts: Liminal and afterlife themes, love and tragedy in musical storytelling, night and twilight imagery, Día de los Muertos cultural evocation, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pelléas et Mélisande, Romeo and Juliet, tone poem and symphonic fantasy