Afternoon Reflections
- Instrumentation
- Cello
- Composed
- 2025
- Duration
- 6'30''
- Publisher
- Composer (self-published)
Purchase or download
About this piece
Unaccompanied piece for cello of about five to six and a half minutes, a Moderato in 4/4 built from short melodic phrases with trills and repeated-note portato figures. It began as a 2010 solo for low wind instrument (the basset-clarinet version won first prize in the Anton Stadler Composition Competition, according to New York Women Composers); the double-bass version followed in 2018 and the cello version in 2025. Cellist Laura Melnicoff gave the cello premiere at the Taylor Music Center, Union College, Schenectady, New York, on 12 January 2025, and the composer sells the digital score (cello or double bass) from her website.
Technical overview
A single melodic line in bass clef that climbs on the A string to G and A-flat (5th position), with slurred chromatic sixteenths, trills, portato repeated notes and triplets. Phrasing and a wide dynamic range (ppp to f) matter more than speed; there are no double stops.
Technical focus
- Shifting
- Accidentals
- Slurs
- Articulation
- Dotted Rhythms
- Rhythm
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Dynamics