Note
My good friend David Kaplan asked me to write a companion piece to Mozart’s K. 414 for his degree recital. My previous attempt at a piano concerto had been a high school effort, and since then, I’d mostly lost interest in the typical “virtuosity for its own sake” soloist- versus-orchestra dynamic of the genre. Luckily, the Mozart-sized forces available led me to approach Home Stretch as chamber music, allowing for more subtle gestures and interplay between musicians.
I also knew I wanted the form of Home Stretch to have something to do with acceleration (Dave is obsessively interested in cars). The piece is in three large sections, each of which ends up being about twice as fast as the previous one: beginning in almost total stasis, working up to an off-kilter dance with stabbing accents, and ushering in a sturm-und-drang cadenza which riles itself up into a perpetual- motion race to the finish. However, there are always little “smudges” of music from each section in the others, sometimes fitting into to their new context, sometimes balefully interrupting.
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Performing “Home Stretch” with Metropolis Ensemble at the Angel Orensanz Center.
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Home Stretch score, print edition
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Home Stretch score, PDF edition
34 pages, 11×15 format. Includes full score only. Parts are available for rental; please email rentals@andres.com for a quote.
