Chi Mei Ricercari
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2013
- Duration
- 28'
- Publisher
- Verlag Neue Musik
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About this piece
Seven 'conversations' between an antique cello and a modern piano, written in 2012–13 for a collaboration between the University of Southampton and the Chi Mei Culture Foundation in Taiwan, whose collection of historic cellos inspired the idea that an instrument remembers all the music it has played. Each movement draws on earlier music (Bach's solo sarabandes and gigues, Cenci, Gabrielli's ricercars, Frescobaldi, Marsh, Beethoven's Op. 102 No. 2) and sets the cello's 17th–18th-century memory against the questioning 21st-century piano. Premiered in Tainan in December 2013 by Nicola Heinrich; published by Verlag Neue Musik (NM2400, edited by David Geringas).
Technical overview
The RAM performers describe mapping each movement to a different cello and adapting to instruments 'as found'; the pianist must constantly decide whether to accompany, double the cello's register or take a character role, and Finnissy's borrowed material is transformed rather than quoted plainly.