Chamber Concerto No.3 for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano Op.147 (2025) c.23’00”

Commissioned for Bridgehampton Chamber Music by friends in loving memory of Neil S Hirsch

I. Prelude
II. Toccata
III. Gymnopédie - Sarabande
IV. Interlude - Cadenza
V. Chorale Variations (1. - 5.)
VI. Gigue / Tarantella
VII. Arietta - Ground
VIII. Postlude

First performance on August 3rd, 2025 by Michael Brown, piano; Marya Martin, flute; Tomasso Longquich, clarinet; Stella Chen, violin; and Carter Brey, cello, at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, Bridgehampton, New York.

ABOUT

Chamber Concerto No.3, Op.147 was commissioned for Bridgehampton Chamber Music by friends in loving memory of Neil S. Hirsch. It is scored for a quintet of instruments (piano, flute, clarinet, violin, and cello) that is commonly referred to in classical musical circles as the “Pierrot Ensemble,” taking its name from Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. In that work, the flautist, clarinettist, and violinist double respectively on piccolo, bass clarinet, and viola, which they do not here.

The structure and some of the material in the Chamber Concerto was loosely inspired by aspects of the Baroque Concerti Grossi of composers such as Corelli and Geminiani and the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach. The work’s eight sections are performed without pause. The opening Prelude is a sort of “warming up” that presents some of the important motivic material of the piece. The movement which follow takes its name from the Baroque Toccata (meaning “touched”) that is usually a display of digital dexterity. The third movement’s title refers to the Gymnopédies of Erik Satie and the Baroque Sarabande: both dances are in triple meter and have an accompaniment that often halts on the second beat of the measure. It was only after I finished composing the entire piece that I came across the following quotation from a poem by Spanish poet J. P. Contamine de Latour that is said to have inspired Satie’s Gymnopédies: “Slanting and shadow-cutting a bursting torrent / Streamed in floods of gold upon the polished flagstone / Where the atoms of flaming amber gleaming / Mingled their sarabande with the gymnopædia.” The brief Interlude – Cadenza which follows is followed by five Chorale Variations, a form favored by Bach, where the melody of the chorale serves and an anchor for each variation. The Gigue – Tarantella sinisterly and nightmarishly combines the fast Baroque dance full of skips and jumps with the Italian “tarantula dance,” both commonly in compound triple meter. The seventh movement’s title Arietta – Ground hints at the form of Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aneas which famously incorporates a “ground bass,” that is, a repeating ostinato which serves as the bass line. The closing “Postlude” brings back material from the previously-heard “Toccata.”