Composer and pianist Daniel Pesca releases a portrait album of his chamber music, Walk with me, my joy, featuring flutist Sarah Frisof, cellist Christine Lamprea, guitarist Dieter Hennings, percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, and Pesca himself on piano. Pesca's compositional style is characterized by lyricism, clearly delineated character areas, and transparent architecture.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 67:41 | |||
Gestures of Grace |
||||
| Sarah Frisof, flute, Daniel Pesca, piano | ||||
| 01 | I. Twirling | I. Twirling | 2:16 | |
| 02 | II. Flowing | II. Flowing | 2:34 | |
| 03 | III. Hinting | III. Hinting | 1:44 | |
| 04 | IV. Glinting | IV. Glinting | 4:36 | |
| 05 | V. Dancing | V. Dancing | 6:08 | |
| 06 | In Solitude | In Solitude | Christine Lamprea, cello | 6:12 |
| 07 | Chaconne | Chaconne | Daniel Pesca, piano | 10:14 |
Three Intermezzos |
||||
| Dieter Hennings, guitar | ||||
| 08 | Three Intermezzos - Intermezzo I | Three Intermezzos - Intermezzo I | 3:27 | |
| 09 | Three Intermezzos - Intermezzo II | Three Intermezzos - Intermezzo II | 2:55 | |
| 10 | Three Intermezzos - Intermezzo III | Three Intermezzos - Intermezzo III | 4:09 | |
Walk with me, my joy |
||||
| Sarah Frisof, flute, Christine Lamprea, cello, Daniel Pesca, piano, lan Rosenbaum, percussion | ||||
| 11 | Prelude | Prelude | 5:40 | |
| 12 | Theme | Theme | 0:51 | |
| 13 | Variation 1 | Variation 1 | 1:01 | |
| 14 | Variation 2 | Variation 2 | 0:43 | |
| 15 | Variation 3 | Variation 3 | 1:31 | |
| 16 | Variation 4 | Variation 4 | 1:20 | |
| 17 | Variation 5 | Variation 5 | 1:42 | |
| 18 | Variation 6 | Variation 6 | 3:44 | |
| 19 | Variation 7 | Variation 7 | 0:58 | |
| 20 | Variation 8 | Variation 8 | 0:49 | |
| 21 | Variation 9 | Variation 9 | 0:50 | |
| 22 | Finale and Variation 10 | Finale and Variation 10 | 2:55 | |
| 23 | Epilogue | Epilogue | 1:22 | |
Daniel Pesca writes music that is simultaneously sophisticated and transparent. The materials are rich with harmonic detail and interest, motivic continuity and development, and rhythmic vitality. The expressive intent is always clear even when it is intentionally multi-layered, making his works eminently listenable and engaging. Walk with me, my joy features Pesca's sensitive performances on piano alongside longtime collaborators flutist Sarah Frisof, cellist Christine Lamprea, percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, and guitarist Dieter Hennings, and reflects Pesca's leadership as a musician's composer, with convincing interpretations and a refreshing absence of superfluous bombast.
Gestures of Grace is inspired by the physicality and elegance of dance. The character of the five conjoined sections can be found in their rhythmic material and varied articulations. The opening "Twirling" features lightly separated motivic gestures that connect longer, legato lines. "Flowing" is sensuous and evocative, with undulating, wavelike arpeggios in the piano supporting accumulating phrases in the flute. "Hinting" is more coy, with a dialogue of off-kilter, jaunty figures between the two instruments which elides directly into the hypnotic "Glinting." The work's final movement, aptly titled "Dancing," is also it's longest and most developmental. Insistent accents and light, playful rhythms alternate, both within a forward driving pulse. The energy turns inward, leading into a reflective flute soliloquy that intensifies into a reprise of the pointed material from the opening before a fleet coda.
In Solitude was written in the uncertain early months of the Covid-19 lockdown, and reflects the unsettling tenor of the moment. The work is divided into three sections: the first is searching, grasping to latch on to familiar elements in an suddenly new landscape. The second section builds on the phrasing from the opening, weaving together breathless figures, before a somber coda that revels in a suspension of time.
Pesca's solo Chaconne for piano uses the iconic formal harmonic device as a springboard for a series of textural variations. Opening with several dramatic pianistic gestures, a clear statement of the theme follows. Swooping arpeggios, punctuated repeated figures, jaunty chordal stabs, and variable groupings bring us into the body of the constantly evolving composition. The middle section finds a moment of temporary repose before building momentum through brilliant passagework, shimmering high register chords, and tolling voicings in the bass. Chaconne closes with a rolling section in triple meter, dotted by virtuosic fluourishes and a bravura final ascent.
Three Intermezzos, composed for and performed here by guitarist Dieter Hennings, are reminiscent of Hans Werner Henze's Drei Tentos for the same instrument in their marriage of economy and expressivity. The first opens with a declamatory three note gesture that is echoed in gradually quieter repetitions and motivic reorientations, evolving into a fantasy of arpeggiated harmonies and brief statements of an angular dance-like theme. The second Intermezzo features quirky grace note figures, brash Bartók pizzicati, and strident minor second dyads, capturing a dry humor. The final movement is elegiac, as repeated tones serve as an anchor around which the guitar builds a musical rhetoric filled with pathos.
The album's title piece for flute, percussion, cello, and piano, Walk with me, my joy, is a set of variations and reflections on an Irish folksong, "Shule Agra." Pesca's mother sung this lullaby to him as a child, and it has stayed with him as a musical landmark of his childhood experience. The Prelude features a lilting ostinato figure built around an ascending major second in the piano and vibraphone, over which the flute and clarinet play lyrical melodic phrases. It reaches an impassioned climax before dispersing into a thoughtful, nostalgic final phrase. The disarmingly simple theme is presented in the flute over a haunting texture of bowed vibraphone and cello glissandi. A series of nine variations follow in varying textural frames, from the pointillistic lightness of Variation 2, the watery fluidity of the solo piano Variation 3, the mysterious halo of Variation 5, the ardent cello-led Variation 6, the quirky interplay between marimba and flute and cello in Variation 7, the quasi-canonic groove in Variation 8, to the glimmering pastels of Variation 9. The Finale and Variation 10 are combined, a gracious and energetic culmination of the previous movements, skillfully orchestrated to take advantage of the colors inherent in this instrumentation. The Epilogue allows the energy from the close of the previous movement to diffuse into the ether, closing on a clarion unison sustained pitch between flute and vibraphone.
– Dan Lippel
Tracks 1-10 Recorded at Hatch Recital Hall, Eastman School of Music, January 2024
Lou Chitty: recording engineer
Tracks 1-5: Joanna Bassett, producer
Tracks 6-10: Daniel Pesca, producer
Tracks 11-23 Recorded at Linehan Concert Hall, University of Maryland Baltimore County
June 2023
Alan Wonneberger: recording engineer
Mark Dover: producer
Sarah Baugher: production assistant
Mastered by Alan Wonneberger
Design by Kerry Lubman
With thanks to Eastman School of Music for their support
Cover photo: Daniel and Rose Pesca, 1993. Photo by Robin Pesca
Daniel Pesca is a composer and pianist whose interpretations stand out for their creativity and dynamism. Daniel has participated in the premieres of more than one hundred new works, many of which were composed for him. In the process, he has shared the stage with many leading new music ensembles, including Ensemble Signal, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente. He is a founding member of the Grossman Ensemble and the Zohn Collective, both notable for their innovative approach to the development of new work. He has performed as concerto soloist with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, Orchestra of the League of Composers, Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble and Slee Sinfonietta.
Daniel appears on recordings from Urtext Classics, Centaur, Albany, New Focus, CCCC, Nimbus, Furious Artisans, Neuma, Sideband, and Oberlin Records. His debut solo album Promontory, released Fall 2021, includes world premieres of works by Augusta Read Thomas, Alison Yun-Fei Jiang, and Aaron Travers, plus compositions by Daniel. In reviews of this album, Daniel has been hailed as “the perfect composer-virtuoso pianist” (All about the Arts) and “equally talented as pianist, composer and ad- vocate of his peers’ works” (Fanfare). Daniel is Assistant Professor of Music at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and was previously artist-in-residence at the University of Chicago.
Sarah Frisof is currently the Associate Professor of Flute at the University of Maryland. She was a semi-finalist in the 2009 Kobe International Flute Competition, and the 2nd Prizewinner of the National Flute Association’s Young Artist Competition and the Heida Hermanns International Woodwind Competition. Sarah has attended the Verbier, Tanglewood, Pacific, and Aspen Music Festivals, and she has played with many major symphony orchestras. She serves as principal flute with the Dallas Wind Symphony, and each summer she plays at Music in the Mountains (Durango, CO) and the Sunflower Music Festival (Topeka, KS). Her interests in outreach and education have taken her to Zimbabwe and Brazil, where she ran music programs and participated in humanitarian work. Sarah previously served on the faculties of the University of Kansas and the University of Texas at Arlington, and is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, the Juilliard School, and the University of Michigan.
CHRISTINE LAMPREA, Cellist and 2018 Sphinx Medal of Excellence Winner, is an artist known for her emotionally committed and intense performances. Upon her Carnegie Hall debut as soloist in 2013, she has since returned to Carnegie, as well as performed with orchestras such Costa Rica National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, National Symphony of Michoacan, New Jersey Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Santa Fe Pro Musica, and toured with the Sphinx Virtuosi across the U.S. As a recitalist, Ms. Lamprea has appeared on prestigious series at Illinois’ Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Florida’s Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, Pepperdine University, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Washington Performing Arts Society. In demand as a chamber musician, she performs regularly with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and has performed with such musicians as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Sarah Chang, Itzhak Perlman, Roger Tapping, and Carol Wincenc.
Ms. Lamprea strives to expand her musical boundaries by exploring many genres of music and non-traditional venues for performance and teaching. Her Songs of Colombia Suite includes arrangements of traditional South American tunes for cello and piano or guitar, and have been performed at the Colombian Embassy and Supreme Court of the United States for Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She has worked with members of Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants, and studied sonatas with fortepiano with Audrey Axinn. She has premiered several works by composers of today. In recent years, she commissioned cadenzas for the Haydn D Major Concerto by Jessie Montgomery, and premiered Jeffrey Mumford’s cello concerto “of fields unfolding...echoing depths of resonant light” with the San Antonio Symphony.
Ms. Lamprea is on the cello faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, serves as substitute faculty at the Juilliard School, and served as Lecturer of Cello at the Texas Christian University School of Music for the 2018-19 academic year. Ms. Lamprea has given masterclasses for the Vivac-e Festival, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Wintergreen Summer Music Festival, among others. She has worked with Ecuadorian youth in the cities of Quito and Guayaquil, as part of a residency between The Juilliard School and “Sinfonia Por La Vida,” a social inclusion program modeled after Venezuela’s El Sistema program. Christine Lamprea is the recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which supported her studies at the New England Conservatory, and a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant, which supported her study with acclaimed cellist Matt Haimovitz. She studied with Bonnie Hampton at The Juilliard School and holds a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Natasha Brofsky. Additional influences were Lynn Harrell, Frans Helmerson, and Philippe Muller. Previous teachers include Ken Freudigman and Ken Ishii.
The musical endeavors of Dieter Hennings Yeomans span from new music on guitar to early music for lute, baroque guitar, and theorbo and can be heard on the Naxos, Nonesuch, Bridge, Parma, New Branch, New Albany, and Innova recording labels.
Mr. Hennings has been a soloist with Canada’s New Music Concerts Ensemble, Riverside Symphony (NYC), Tito Sccipa Orchestra (Lecce, Italy), Orquestra Sinfónica do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil), Eastman BroadBand Ensemble, Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Universidad de Guanajuato, Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora, the University of Arizona Philharmonia, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Monterrey among many others. Mr. Hennings has won first prize in several prestigious competitions including the 2008 Aaron Brock International Guitar Competition (Toronto), 2005 Eastman Guitar Concerto Competition, the 2002 Villa de Petrer, Alicante (Spain) International Young Artists Competition, the 2001 Portland International Guitar Competition, among others.
Hennings is Professor of Guitar at the University of Kentucky School of Music and has been instructor of guitar at the Soundscapes New Music Festival and a resident at Tanglewood and Banff Music festivals.
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
Listen to full streaming tracks while you browse the site. New tracks enabled for streaming every month. Click on the button to open up the radio player.
