Rhapsody for String Quartet

Duration: 11'

PROGRAM NOTES

Rhapsody for String Quartet is a through-composed musical story that traces its primary theme’s journey through a variety of landscapes, battles, and adventures. This hero, as it were, meets a few like-minded but diverse friends along the way who reappear throughout the tale, sometimes to help and sometimes to hinder him, finally uniting with him at the end in an exciting finale.

While the piece is not necessarily intended to be interpreted programmatically, its form nevertheless could be likened to an adventure narrative with its linear development and emphasis on motivic recurrence. Set in a rich pandiatonic tonal idiom and guided by a Neo-Romantic aesthetic, the eleven-minute Rhapsody makes many virtuosic demands on its performers.

Awards

Finalist, Lake George Music Festival Composition Competition, adjudicated by Jennifer Higdon (2016)
Winner of Biola University's PERC Competition (2014)

Premiere Information

Premiered by Ensemble Cristo Los Angeles at Biola University, La Mirada, CA on March 3, 2015

Recorded by PERC Quartet at Studio 770 in Brea, CA on March 27, 2015

 

Score+Recording
Recorded by PERC Quartet

Rhapsody for String Quartet is a through-composed musical story that traces its primary theme's journey through a variety of landscapes, battles, and adventures. This hero, as it were, meets a few like-minded but diverse friends along the way who reappear throughout the tale, sometimes to help and sometimes to hinder him, finally uniting with him at the end in an exciting finale.