program note
Concerto da Camera II is a work for six instruments which may be further grouped into three separate entities: clarinet, string quartet, and piano. In this combination, chosen by the work’s commissioning organizations (the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in conjunction with Mount Holyoke College), lies the work’s first challenge. While pairings of any two of these three “sound types” abound in the concert literature, the three together form a far less common soundscape. The main challenge appears in the necessity to reconcile the potential of both the clarinet and the piano of acting in a soloistic capacity when pitted against the string quartet. Indeed, the three movements of the Concerto approach this issue in various ways, with the balance of power between the six instruments’ potential for unity and contrast, solo and ensemble playing, continually shifting and changing.
Yet another, more delicate, balance of power is at play here, namely, the relationship between the external, foreground level of the piece and a subtler background level. What, at first, appear like small, gentle melodic strands, mere echoes or residues of the main events, gradually assume an inner life of their own. Never actually taking over yet always there, a salient, if quiet, factor within the work’s compositional fabric and evolving organicism.
Though each movement includes numerous tempo fluctuations, the overall thrust of the work clearly suggests a fast-slow-fast framework, with the last movement being a loosely structured, occasionally tempestuous Rondo.
—Shulamit Ran
information
Commissioned by Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in conjunction with Mount Holyoke College, in celebration of the sesquicentennial of Mount Holyoke College
Premiere performances:
October 25 and 27, 1987
At Alice Tully Hall, NYC, as part of a 10-city tour of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Duration: c. 17’30
recordings
The Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago, Cliff Colnot, conductor, with Edward Gilmore, clarinet: Music of Shulamit Ran, made possible with support of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Composers Award Recording, Composers Recording Inc. (CRI), CD 609
Da Capo Chamber Players: Music by Shulamit Ran, Bridge Records BCD 9052
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller or directly from Theodore Presser (here and here).