Thursday 11 September 2014

Five2 (1991)

A five minute piece for three clarinets, English horn, and timpani. The timpani is silent for the first two minutes, the English horn is silent for the last two, and the clarinets play throughout.

Anyway, there's not really much to say about this. It's a standard Number Piece: dissonant, slow, and with a few extended silences. Most of the notes are held for a long time, and the dynamics are consistently soft.

The horn seems to have much the same timbre as the clarinets - I couldn't really distinguish them - so the timpani provides some nice variety, in the form of a quiet, rumbling percussive sound, reminiscent of distant thunder. In contrast to the fairly bright sound of the clarinets and horn, it suggests anticipation and perhaps unease, giving the second half of the piece a somewhat darker tone. Not a particularly notable composition, but it's lovely as usual.

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