Op. 47 for Violoncello and Piano
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2008
- Duration
- 8'30''
- Publisher
- Canadian Music Centre (unpublished, printed by CMC), RSN 72109, call no. MI 3213 F6635o; deposited at CMC Quebec
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About this piece
Alexandra Fol, a Sofia-born composer and organist based in Montreal, wrote this single-movement work in January 2008 for her friend and colleague David Gerstein, who commissioned it. Gerstein gave the premiere with pianist Tomoko Kashiwagi at the University of Arkansas on 1 April 2016. For most of its length the cello plays alone, often written on two or three staves at once: whispered natural harmonics, a gradual move to stopped notes, strings blocked so that no pitch sounds, harmonic glissandi, and bursts of 'frantic squeaky' detaché in the highest register marked 'Go Crazy!!!'. The piano enters only near the end, with a few high notes over a low pedal tone, and the music fades out at ppppp.
Technical overview
The meter changes almost every bar (2/4 up to 11/8), and the cello part moves among bass, tenor and treble clefs, with separate staves for simultaneous arco and left-hand pizzicato. It calls for natural and artificial harmonics, harmonic glissandi, quintuplet runs, trills, chords, unpitched bowing on blocked strings and bow changes 'as fast as possible' at the top of the fingerboard.