Compelling chamber music from important contemporary composers

Alchemy: Music by Jalbert, Stucky & Vine

The Jupiter String Quartet and pianist Bernadette Harvey bring us a standout disc of music for piano and strings commissioned by the Friends of Arizona Chamber Music, with important works by Pierre Jalbert, Steven Stucky and Carl Vine. Jalbert's large-scale Piano Quintet, written in 2017, includes both music-historical ("Mannheim Rocket") and liturgical ("Kyrie") references, and the formal architecture of the work is from the 19th century, but this is an urgently contemporary piece, full of today's turbulence and an intense foreboding about the future. This is a compelling piece.

In the liner notes Steven Stucky expresses his love for the Piano Quartet form, and especially for the works of Mozart and Brahms in this special chamber music niche. As so often happens with art that comes out of a special connection with works from the past - think of Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras, for example, or Cy Twombly's veneration of Nicolas Poussin ("I would've liked to have been Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time.") - the contemporary artist's true self is discovered. That's, I think, what's happened here, in Stucky's Piano Quartet from 2005. In another large-scale work, this time in one movement, Stucky explores landscapes of doubt and fear and anguish, with occasional episodes of solace and grace.

Carl Vine has compared his music to the growth of crystals, and there's a strong impression of organic growth in his 2013 Fantasia for Piano Quintet, with themes emerging from fragments and taking odd turns and unexpected paths. The Jupiter Quartet and Bernadette Harvey bring just the right, very light, touch to this fragile music, allowing it to unfold in its own way.

The program ends with Pierre Jalbert's 2012 Secret Alchemy for Piano Quartet, but this is no bravura encore, but rather another substantial piece that explores matters of significant import. The focus here is on mystery, secrecy and mysticism, with the sound of medieval chants and the reverberations of a cathedral, all wrapped up in a kind of post-modern pastiche. Indeed, this might work (thought it certainly wasn't intended to be) as the soundtrack to an Umberto Eco novel, perhaps to his Postscript to The Name of the Rose.

What a fine program this is! I enjoyed every minute, and found many new delights waiting every time I listened again.

Here are the Jupiter String Quartet with Bernadette Harvey, performing the world premiere of Pierre Jalbert's Piano Quintet.