Cavatina at Midnight
(2008)
clarinet, cello and piano
duration: 10'
Gemini Publications
Commissioned by CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust
First performance 8 May
Catriona Scott (clarinet) Gemma Rosefield (cello)
available for violin, cello and piano
Review available
| Cavatina at Midnight encloses, at its centre, a reference to the opening of the sublime Cavatina, the fifth movement from Beethoven's String Quartet in Bb Major, Op 130. Shapes and shades of the long lyrical line are hinted at throughout the work. Cavatina at Midnight also brings together songs of another kind, two allusions to the nightingale; one drawn from the poem by John Keats, who wrote Ode to a Nightingale one springtime under a plum tree in a Hampstead garden, and the other from the first ever birdsong recording in 1927, in which the cellist, Beatrice Harrison, played well-known songs in nocturnal duet with a nightingale in her garden. In the trio the clarinet/violin takes an agile role, suggestive of birdsong, often with arpeggio motifs, and is supported by the lyricism of the cello. As I was writing the piece a blackbird sang at my window, not its beautiful, mellifluous evensong but an insistent F sharp which somehow found its way into Cavatina at Midnight.
Cavatina at Midnight was commissioned by the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust and first performed by Catriona Scott (clarinet) Gemma Rosefield (cello) and Michael Dussek (piano) as part of the Hampstead and Highgate Festival on 8 May at Christ Church, Hampstead Square, London . A version for violin, cello and piano was made shortly afterwards.
© 2008, Cecilia McDowall |