Kawai Piano Prices: Duo: Violin and Piano (String Solo) [Paperback] Review

this dates from Carter's Middle period; the works after the massive "Concerto for Orchestra"and the upcoming :Third String Quartet:; this "Duo" for Violin and Piano reveals that you need to locate a new context if you want the genre itself to speak to you, otherwise you resort to nefarious predictable approaches as engaging the styles of Neo this or Neo that, and when you think of the countless Violin modern Sonatas that have been written,idly boring stuff. I would think you would want the genre not to be a deadend, and it has certainly the Beo-Romantic literature pummeled the Sonata genre into the ground,with Hindemith,Poulenc,Milhaud,Rorem.
Carter here directly wants a situation where he is dealing with timbre,timbre exposed in and by-itself rather than utilizing the already given expressive shapes of this genre,andto manipulate and explore the unique characteristics of the two instruments and set up a situation where the two can be developed along fairly interesting lines of complexity, opacity and communication if possible. He allows only certain intervals to appear in each part,as a way of fixing the field of play, giving the instruments like a shape of unique colour; for example the Violin is dominated,saturated with the intervals m2,M3,tritones,P5,M6 and m7th fairly resonant producing materials,with double stops; the piano is burdened with M2,m3,P4,also tritone,m6 and M7th, there is also a Fixed Octave scheme established in the first 83 measures of the work, the tones(beginning on the g below Middle C),g,a,c,d,eb,f,ab,b,c3,e,f#,g,a,c,d,eb,f,ab,b. The rhythmic utilizations as well plays a role in defining the characteristics of the instrument, so the Violin has more a soloistic demeanor,anarchic, free with tied over the bar tones, more asymmetrical units displayed, against the sometimes more predictable percussive piano.The piano is utilized very much as in the earlier :Sonata for Violoncello and Piano:,like a time keeper/retainer, a walking bass or Baroque Trio basso continuo. You really cannot say there is accompaniment here merely another part. Carter also morvelously utilizes differign arrays of articulations in the piano, something you will find later in his "Night Fantasies", and "90+" for piano solo.
The genre of the Violin and Piano is a well trodden, well reserfed for serious discourse in some respects, with Arnold Schoenberg's "Fantasy for Violin and Piano, one of the last works he wrote in the early Fifties.Also Milton Babbitt's "Joy of Sextetts", and "More Joy".The solo Violin genre as we travel past these times has not faired much better with Boulez's disappointing "Anthemes" utilzing antiphonal dimensions with very little to exploit or reveal or say, and Nono's weakest work of his innovative late period, the "Lontano. . . for two violins with also antiphonal handlings.

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Product Description:
Composed in 1974 and commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress, Duo was first performed by Paul Zukofsky and Gilbert Kalish on March 21, 1975. It reflects the contrast between the sounds made by stroking the violin with the bow and those made by striking the piano.

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