Jasper String Quartet & Natalie Zhu - Tina Davidson: Barefoot (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Composer Tina Davidson writes “For years I composed about a sense of connectedness to something larger than myself. But in this decade of life, I find myself returning to quieter issues.” On this inward looking, deeply personal release, Davidson’s chosen vehicle for exploring that relative quietude is chamber music for string instruments and piano. In these works for variations of the piano quintet, Davidson draws on the rich lineage of classical chamber music, and takes advantage of its unique capacity to explore Romantic style expression. Within that frame, she consistently diverges from expectations, putting her individual compositional stamp on each piece and reclaiming well traveled textural territory for a unique expression of the artistic moment in which she finds herself.

Tremble for piano trio is a musical meditation on a state of restless anticipation. Building off of moto perpetuo arpeggios in the piano, lightly muted from inside the keyboard, the violin and cello trade off lyrical gestures. Davidson imports the sense of expectancy into the violin part by way of momentary colorations of phrases, whether they be tremolos, adjustments to a bright sul pont timbre, or the brief skittering of a col legno gesture. The underlying expressive tenor of the “trembling” vacillates between hope and apprehension. Approximately two thirds through the work, Davidson steers the piece towards more angular, mixed meter material, as vigorous passagework interweaves through the three players. Ultimately, the work finds its way to a bright resolution in a buoyant coda.

Barefoot, for piano quartet, opens with a series of slow glissandi, sliding between pitches as one run one’s feet through grass and dirt exploring the ground. As with Tremble, Davidson sticks with a musical idea long enough to inhabit it and explore its corners and possibilities. A contrasting, rhythmically flowing section follows and establishes the main body of the work. Barefoot is a celebration of exhilarating connection to the physical — dance, freedom, and the earth.

Scored for piano quintet, Wēpan translates as “weeping” from Old English. Davidson uses metallic preparations on specific notes on the piano to create a multi-dimensional timbral soundscape. Evocative sliding gestures in the strings meld and intersect with effected melodies on the keyboard. Near the midpoint of the work, the piano plays a music box-like accompaniment underneath a harmonized melody in rhythmic unison in the strings. Davidson uses sparing microtonal inflections to color this “weeping” theme. In a dramatic climax, the ensemble plays an expansive melody together with a tremolo effect, as the piano preparations shimmer within the overall sound. The work ends with the plaintive glissandi with which it began.

Hush for violin and piano balances impressionistic harmonic ideas with a primarily Neo-romantic frame of a keyboard supporting an elegiac primary line in the violin. Davidson alternates between turbulent, swirling figures in the violin, lyrical melodies over gentle arpeggios, and off-the string development of angular motivic ideas. Hush ends with a quiet rustle, as the violin ascends to the fifth of a tonic chord over a gently oscillating figure in the piano.

Davidson composed Leap for piano quartet during the imposed lockdown of the Covid pandemic, suddenly finding ourselves in entirely new terrain and jumping into the unknown. In the opening movement, “Uncertain Ground,” brief moments of polytonal inflection help to establish a sense of unfamiliar circumstances. “Sudden Passage” is vigorous and driven, characterized by modular motivic material distributed among alternating pairs of instruments that is punctuated by accented arrivals. Davidson contracts this angularity with soaring melodies in the violin and viola over percolating accompaniment.

The Jasper String Quartet and pianist Natalie Zhu perform Davidson’s music with warmth and lyricism, bringing a traditional chamber music sensibility to their readings. Davidson’s embrace of the canonical chamber music frame is refreshing and honest, as she mines its resources to zero in on expressive nuances that capture her artistic sources of inspiration over the last fifteen years.

Tracklist:
01. Davidson- Tremble
02. Davidson- Barefoot
03. Davidson- Wēpan
04. Davidson- Hush
05. Davidson- Leap- I. Uncertain Ground
06. Davidson- Leap- II. Sudden Passage


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