An inspiration to many because of her moral strength and endurance, nurse and mother Anne Nard has led a life that can be summarized by Tibetan monk Sogyal Rinpoche: “Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our character can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes.”

Czech composer Sylvie Bodorová (b. 1954) writes about her “Three Sonnets,” a tribute to Anne: “When I read the touching story of the life of Anne Nard, full of setbacks but also of incredible vitality, I remembered Shakespeare’s sonnets. There is a gulf of 400 years between their time and ours, and yet they have accompanied us for generations, comforting us in our transience and posing questions for which we have no answers to this day. There is no user guide to life—we all have to struggle with our fate, each the same and each differently. There are those who shine with their inner strength like a beacon to the rest of us—in spite of themselves being sorely tested— just like Shakespeare’s sonnets have been shining for centuries. The work was composed in 2013 and commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, sponsored by Linda Leedberg, in honor of her mother, Anne Nard. It was written with great admiration for her will and strength in giving joy in spite of her own destiny.

“The Three Sonnets for Piano consist of three movements.

“The first movement draws its inspiration from William Shakespeare’s 60th sonnet and in doing so is quite symbolic: as the hour with its sixty minutes is fast on the wane, so just as fast flows the time of our life.

“The contrasting second movement is headed by a quotation from Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 91: ‘Thy love is better than high birth to me, richer than wealth.’ The music reflects a brittle celebration of love, putting it above all else.

“The third movement is built on Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 115. Its toccata-like character comes to grips with the hegemony of time, in part returning thematically to the musical material of the first movement. “In the first and third movements I make maximum use of pianistic stylization, while the second movement is in contrast quite simple, its brittle notes floating beyond space and time.”