This work was commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and premiered by Bernadette Harvey and the Shanghai Quartet at the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival in 2013. It follows no strict formal structure and contains little repetition or recapitulation; instead, related motifs flow organically from one to the next across the work’s nine interlinked chapters.

Each chapter uses highly differentiated techniques on the piano to refresh its relationship to the strings, ranging from continuous rolling arpeggios and pointillistic staccatos to heavily sustained chords and ringing bell-like sonorities. The central episodes unite to form a reflective ‘slow movement’ which is followed by a fast rhythmic climax. It is ‘pure’ music using no external imagery or allusion.

Carl Vine, January 2013