Piano Quartet, "Last Words" (2014)

My Piano Quartet, "Last Words," premiered by Kathryn Brown, piano, Stephen Rose, violin, Kirsten Docter, viola, and Melissa Kraut, cello, October 4, 2015, at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
I. Declarations
II. Tomorrow, long ago (Variations) [begins at 11:56]
In October 2008, I attended my first concert as a new faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music ̶ a faculty recital featuring two of my favorite, “desert-island” works: the E-flat major piano quartets of Mozart and Schumann. The performances were so inspiring that I knew immediately that I wanted to write a work for these wonderful musicians. As every composer knows, though, the best laid musical plans often go awry, and I did not get a chance to begin sketching until late 2013. By that time, that stellar quartet of performers had now become good friends and colleagues, and I was able to more closely tailor the work to their own technical brilliance and musical depth, resulting in what might be considered a particularly “personal” piece.
The work is in two movements. The first, “Declarations,” juxtaposes music which is articulate and vertical with that which is legato and horizontal, both of which vie to assert their importance over the course of the movement (the title refers to the declamatory nature of both musics). The second movement, “Tomorrow, long ago (Variations)” is a series of lyric variations based on a 2011 setting I made of James Merrill’s 1969 sonnet, “Last Words.” However, unlike the traditional Classical/Romantic variation set, my variations are much less clear-cut and much more a re-imagining of the music from the “ground up,” using the basic musical gestures of the setting in a variety of interconnected ways (the original version of ”Last Words” only appears briefly in the final section of the movement before dissolving into silence). The complete quartet lasts approximately twenty-three minutes in performance.
Piano Quartet, “Last Words” was composed for my friends and colleagues Kathryn Brown (piano), Stephen Rose (violin), Kirsten Docter (viola), and Melissa Kraut (cello) who gave the premiere performance on October 4, 2015 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Special thanks to The Copland House, where much of this work was written and revised in July 2014.
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