Caprice
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2014
- Publisher
- American Composers Alliance (American Composers Edition)
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About this piece
Caprice for cello and piano (2014) is a spirited, virtuosic showpiece by Dolores White. It opens with a fortissimo burst of high, bouncing sixteenths, alternates a driving, leaping dance figure with a slower rubato episode, and keeps the piano in close rhythmic dialogue throughout. It makes a lively recital contrast to White's lyrical On Edge, written the same year.
Technical overview
Opens fortissimo high in treble clef with off-the-string sixteenths at quarter = 108-112, then runs chromatically down the whole instrument with an accelerando. The Tempo I section repeats a figure of slurred, accented eighth-note leaps across the strings in changing meters (4/4, 3/4, 2/4). A Meno mosso (quarter = 79, rubato e espressivo) turns to wide, arpeggiated phrases from the low D with sixteenth-note triplets before moving into tenor clef.
Technical focus
- Spiccato
- Shifting
- String Crossings
- Accidentals
- Meter Changes
- Rubato
- Dynamics
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Ensemble Skills