The pianist Kate Dixon commissioned these three little pieces for an ambitious Postcard Project she devised for the European Piano Teachers conference held at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2005.  All pieces were to be issued on A5-sized postcards.  For these three the pianist would be invited to imagine sending home pictures of butterflies seen on the French side of the Pyrenees – butterflies I myself had seen while camping there in the 1980s.  They may be performed in any order, or singly.

Gavarnie :  a smallish, gentle, dark brown butterfly, bronze-tinted, with beady ringlet eyes on each wing.

Manto ringlet :  higher up in the Pyrenees, a small, very dark brown butterfly, blown hither and thither by the wind before coming to rest on a bush.

Mountain small white :  a beautiful, delicately-shaped butterfly, white with a touch of gold, engaging in elegant, airy flutterings in a warm wind.

Also available as part of the solo piano volume Pianthology and on Tido Music as a resource and interactive learning tool.