"Chiaroscuri" for Piano Quintet [Philip Daniel; composed 2018, revised 2020]
Revision of my 2018 Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, a five-movement work constructed in a cyclic and double-function form, with a chromatically-saturated harmonic language and approach to musical rhetoric influenced by Late Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism.
You may follow along with the score, here: https://app.box.com/s/27cfz39esd8po71olsc083kb6y03p2fl
I. Danza profana 0:00
II. Grisaille 10:23
A "grisaille" is a sketch in shades of grey. Here you will hear an impressionistic tableau, soaked in slithering hyper-chromaticism, in which material presented in the first movement is further developed through motivic, contrapuntal, and harmonic elaboration and transformation Textures both shimmering and foggy textures surface, and the initial suavity soon gives way to a slightly manic polyphony. The movement concludes with a harmonic construction based on the whole-tone scale fading into a single pitch (leading directly into the third movement).
III. Valse-scherzo 17:25
From the mists of the second movement, we arrive at the third, a thickly sardonic, though sometimes broad, waltz-cum-scherzo which manipulates motives familiar from the first movement in a series of successive developmental episodes divided by semi-dialogic passages characterized by dramatic, striving flourishes. The movement concludes resolutely, virtuosically, perhaps explosively, as if all the tension built up earlier has suddenly been released.
IV. Verdaille 22:45
Following the vertiginous, macabre waltz of the third movement is another tableau, a romance with an increasingly intense and martial middle section. Out of an uncertain recitative-like statement in the viola and a questioning "Lydian Dominant" figure in the piano arises cantabile cello melody derived from motives introduced in the first movement and accompanied by shimmering tremolos. A contrapuntal development follows, dramatically operatic, ebbing and flowing in tension, becoming more fatalistic, until the sudden appearance of a winding and cryptic melody in parallel octaves, involving the whole ensemble and drawn again from earlier melodic material. The "Lydian Dominant" rising-and-falling motive suddenly interrupts this chimeric passage, leading to a modified recapitulation that culminates in a passage of foggy hyper-chromatic counterpoint and, finally, an unclouding -- a conclusion of great transparency in what is arguably the relative major.
V. Danza estatica 29:18
An "ecstatic dance" of irrepressible cthonic energy disturbs the tranquility established by the penultimate movement's final cadence. Melodic fragments and "harmonic archetypes" established in the first and developed in succeeding movements finally come to a head in a finale characterized by highly dramatic, even overwrought, contrapuntal and chromatic interplay, often exploiting the timbral differences between strings and piano. The most virtuosic and dissonant of the five movements by far, building up to a volcanic climax, yet redemption is attained through one last iteration of a motive of central importance, leading to a transfigured E Major reprisal of the final cadence of the first movement.
If you enjoyed this, please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/philipdaniel or https://www.subscribestar.com/philip-daniel