Piano Quintet SKU: BR.EB-9399
Hommage a Schubert. Composed by Christian Mason. Chamber music; stapled. Edition Breitkopf. Music post-1945; New music (post-2000). Score and parts. Composed 2020. 72 pages. Duration 15'. Breitkopf and Haertel #EB 9399. Published by Breitkopf and Haertel (BR.EB-9399). ISBN 9790004188736. 9 x 12 inches.
One of my favourite pieces of music as a child - and I still love it - was Schubert's Trout Quintet. It was partly the wonderful music, of course, so light-hearted and joyful on the surface, yet with twists and turns and murky depths of feeling too. But I also liked the picture of a trout on the album sleeve - such beautiful creatures! Last year, while resident at the Villa Concordia in Bamberg, as I took daily walks along the Regnitz river, I observed the trout as they calmly hovered and swayed in the shallows... But if they felt my shadow they were gone in a split second! If you ever get a chance to look closely at brown trout you see that they are covered in myriad brown/red spots of varied sizes; camouflage I suppose. Now those patterns seem to be mixing in my mind with the shifting colours of the spectral arpeggios that flow through this little piece. It's a watery piece, with rippling waves, shimmering surfaces and textural veils around the melodies which flow through it. But it also takes inspiration (and it's title) from a Pablo Neruda poem: the third stanza of Every Day You Play includes the line The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. There's no singer, but I imagine an invisible or imaginary voice somewhere behind (or beyond) the music, and so the score includes a melodic setting of the text. Even though this is not performed by a voice, the melody is always played by the ensemble - especially high register cello - making the piece something like the inverse of a song without words. (Christian Mason)
World premiere: Aix-en-Provence, October 16, 2020 Commissioned by the Grand Theatre de Provence - Aix-en-Provence.
