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Stercus bubulus omnia vincit
—My Daddy
In the first movement —poco alegro— the dramatic arc begins at a quick tempo, though activity repeatedly slows in a way that makes clear that motion is shaped largely by the sonorities of clarinet and cello. While the musical language is predominantly tonal, it creates inspired tension by a sudden diminuendo cloaking a chromatic descent in unstable motifs and justapositions of often jarring affective contrasts in the sonorous and expressive pianissimo resources of both piano and viola, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the precision that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.
The genteel quadruple meter marks the numerous moments of startling harmonies, by turns amiable and brilliant, with extended solo passages for the piano and violin which seem to alternate with only the merest of thematic threads to link them in utmost tenderness by alternately lilting and unstabilizing rhythm and by adding acidic dissonances and layering voices in a timbral palette of claustrophobic ensembles.
In the second movement —poco largo ma con sentimento— a procession of bell-like F-major piano chords, dissonant tones sounding in their midst, ascending fourth in the first two chords, lend a rebarbative raucousness to the texture and a massive, almost autonomous, slow section wrestles with the ambition of weaving an arpeggio of new compositional materials and methods precisely calculated to produce disorienting harmonic shifts, a kind of otherness fraught with feelings of guilt and misgivings about the past.
Extended, almost imperceptible, evolving phrase-lengths contribute a pastoral quality as the movement returns to the same descending semitones that marked the previous movement, with d-sharp minor moving towards b-minor via e-minor with a climatic return to d-minor in pianissimo syncopation cadencing explosively in C-major, contrasting with the shift to F-major after e-minor in a tremolo sustained bass note before embarking on an extended and fantastical reworking of themes.
The third movement —poco con moto ma non assai— The initiatory theme is rhythmically simple, almost a parallelogram; but its intervallic leaps are oddly obtuse, and when the first forte arrives, the effect is craggy, and thus human: slightly awkward, not smoothed over.
With the second theme we are already at risk of losing our metrical bearings as the instruments dovetail in a canonic off-set, suggesting more a measure of three and seven than of four. In effect, by losing lost track of the downbeat the music floats off the grid.
It is brought back abruptly by a kind of capriccio-like, tempestuous, darkly ringing scherzo in the unusual key of e-flat minor, yielding to a middle section in the key of B major, the B-flat of e-flat minor moving up half a step to the B-natural of B major, with dotted-eighth-and-sixteenth-notes at times clashing or alternating with minutely off-set triplet figures as the violins move, some from b-flat minor to a-flat major, some from d-flat Major to E-flat major, some from C-minor to C-major, and one from a-flat major to B-major to E-major and then gradually through b-flat minor to F-major.
After this we might reasonably expect a return to b-flat, but instead a lingering F-major gives way unexpectedly to g-flat major, d-flat major, a-flat minor, e-flat minor, and then through a semitone shift of g-flat to G-natural in the cello’s melody and a-flat to A-natural in the left hand of the piano in the chromatic upper B-natural. Thus suggestive rather than exhaustive, the movement advances by juxtaposition, dependent on gaps often visible only when seen on the printed page.
The fourth movement —poco non tropo— begins with a recitative exhibiting extreme density of form and texture and a longing for timelessness which shows numerous influences, some predictable, others less so, in imperceptible variations of a seemingly unstable cello part sometimes “”stolen,” as it were, by the viola’s intense pizzicato.
Although obscured at times by outward simplicity, the tautness of the melodic material and the tiniest changes in the mood and motion via the ever evolving register and gesture convey a sense of unbounded pleasure and freedom from bourgeois constraints, and must be played with sentiment that is not superfluous.
Two quatets confront each other separated by the focal bass, with violins and violas standing up with bows flying as inverted legs in criss-crossed choreography.
After darkening and grounding the now-familiar chords in extreme subjectivity, unity is created by reworking clear motivic bursts, with diminished chord arpeggiations leading to stabbing strands of pathos and innocence matched by great profundity and emotional depth.
D.K. degli Musicalistici
(Source: The basic text of this page was originally derived from notes offered at countless chamber music concerts by various groups.)