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Quartet
2019
Cello
Clarinet
Flute
Violin
- Program Notes
- "Capriccio" began as a response to the work of Hans Hofmann, the influential German-American artist and teacher. Hofmann’s best-known work is abstract, with great slabs of paint of simple shapes and lines that seldom represent anything directly, and the finest of these paintings are charged with intense emotion that is difficult to describe. Hofmann was clearly aware of the expressivity in his abstract art, giving his paintings evocative titles that demonstrate a poetic sensibility I found as irresistible as the images themselves. As much as I responded to Hofmann’s visual art when composing "Capriccio," I also responded to these titles; I began to think of them as verbal frames to my musical canvas. "Capriccio" is in three movements, borrowing their titles from Hofmann’s paintings. The first movement, "Lonely Journey," begins as a ponderous funeral march and is transformed as it traverses an imagined musical landscape. The second movement, "Pénombres du Soir (Evening Twilight)," is, like Hofmann’s painting, all about transitions between states. It begins with a shimmering, fragile texture and a sort of grotesque aria before transitioning into a scherzo - a flight of fancy that could have arisen in the space between waking and sleeping. The final movement, "Bacchanale-Phantasmagoria," takes its title from two paintings. The "Bacchanale" is a scene of wild revelry, loosely drawn from Balkan dance music. The music gets wilder and wilder leading to the brief "Phantasmagoria" that concludes the piece; in the final moments the music becomes a fever dream of all the images in the piece, finally collapsing into ecstatic exhaustion. Capriccio was commissioned by Hub New Music and Peabody Essex Museum in celebration of the museum's Han Hofmann Exhibition “The Nature of Abstraction.” Premiere December 2019 at PEM (Salem, MA).
- Recording Notes
- Musicians Hub New Music Michael Avitabile, Flute Nicholas Brown, Clarinet Alyssa Wang, Violin Jesse Christeson, Cello Credits Producer: Shauna Barravecchio Recording Engineer: Christopher Moretti Assistant Engineer: John Weston Editing: Shauna Barravecchio Mixing: Christopher Moretti Mastering: Jesse Lewis Design Laura Grey Recorded at Futura Productions, Roslindale, MA on June 28-29, 2021 This recording was made possible through funding from the Research Enhancement Program, Texas State University
- Record Label
- Hub New Music
- Performer Credits
- Hub New Music
- Publisher
- Qualified Noise