The Symmetries is a series of 49 very short pieces for piano four-hands that Tom Johnson wrote on the basis of a number of drawings he had made in 1980, using a music typewriter. These drawings were made up entirely out of musical notation symbols, and were conceptual studies of symmetry in music – the drawings being perfectly symmetrical, using the musical symbols in a great variety of ways. The drawings themselves were not playable scores, though, because the symbols for notes are written on the drawings without clefs. The 4-hands piano pieces are practical elaborations of the drawings.
Dante Oei & I performed the Symmetries a few times in concert, to the delight of the composer, who asked us to record the piece for him, which we did in 2004 at Studio Grasland in Haarlem.