Composer Daniel Strong Godfrey's Toward Light presents three quintets for string quartet and piano, guitar, and cello respectively, showcasing his expressive, finely crafted chamber music. Featuring performances by the Cassatt Quartet with guests pianist Ursula Oppens, guitarist Eliot Fisk, and cellist Nicole Johnson, the works on Toward Light are elegantly balanced compositions, cohesive conceptions that are deeply felt.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 59:47 | |||
Ricordanza–Speranza |
||||
| Cassatt String Quartet, Ursula Oppens, piano | ||||
| 01 | I. Adagio poco rubato | I. Adagio poco rubato | 6:54 | |
| 02 | II. Con fuoco | II. Con fuoco | 4:51 | |
| 03 | Interlude | Interlude | 1:53 | |
| 04 | III. Adagio poco rubato; con anima | III. Adagio poco rubato; con anima | 4:51 | |
Toward Light |
||||
| Cassatt String Quartet, Eliot Fisk, guitar | ||||
| 05 | I. Dusk: Prayer | I. Dusk: Prayer | 8:26 | |
| 06 | II. Midnight | II. Midnight | 3:48 | |
| 07 | III. Cadenza | III. Cadenza | 3:29 | |
| 08 | IV. Dawn | IV. Dawn | 4:58 | |
To Mourn, To Dance |
||||
| Cassatt String Quartet, Nicole Johnson, cello | ||||
| 09 | I. Prelude | I. Prelude | 5:14 | |
| 10 | II. Danza | II. Danza | 4:16 | |
| 11 | III. Interlude | III. Interlude | 4:39 | |
| 12 | IV. Fugue–Tarantella | IV. Fugue–Tarantella | 6:28 | |
Daniel Godfrey’s Toward Light features three of his quintets, all for string quartet plus one instrument, that were written over the course of seventeen years, from 2006 to 2023. Each quintet takes on its own character, in part shaped by the added instruments for the individual pieces, but also due to the internal logic Godfrey establishes within each work. Daniel Godfrey’s compositional approach to the format is steeped in the chamber music lineage, bringing a modernist sensibility to pitch and harmony within a frame that develops motives and journeys through structures in an organic way. The Cassatt Quartet performs all three works on the recording with verve and dexterity, joined by guests pianist Ursula Oppens, guitarist Eliot Fisk, and cellist Nicole Johnson for the three works respectively.
The album opens with Ricordanza-Speranza (2006), a four movement for piano quintet that is played without pause. The opening movement, “Adagio Poco Rubato,” is lyrical and focused, beginning with a poignant solo violin passage before the other strings enter to further develop the initial motives. Godfrey saves the piano entrance for nearly two minutes into the movement, as it plays ethereal chords behind airy violin harmonics and the cello and viola weave together elegiac melodic material. “Con fuoco” is vigorous, opening with a forceful, composite unison melody in strings that enters into a pocketed dialogue with stabbing chords in the piano. A second, lighter theme endeavors to take the movement into brighter territory, but is constantly foiled by interrupting muscular, material. The short piano solo, “Interlude: Adagio poco rubato,” spins out elastic flourishes that are frequently punctuated by impetuous staccato buttons. Dramatic block chords push the texture to a climax before the movement closes with light detached piano chords that elide into the keyboard part in the subsequent movement.
The title of the work translates as “recollection-hope,” and Godfrey embeds references back to the other movements throughout, as the spirit of the broad, joyful fourth movement also looks back to the High Romantic heyday of chamber music.
Toward Light (2023) for guitar and string quartet, featuring guitarist Eliot Fisk, finds Godfrey grappling with the deep uncertainty of our time, and reaching towards hopeful outcomes. The opening movement, “Dusk: Prayer,” begins with a dialogue between quartet and solo guitar. The strings provide lush, mournful chordal statements and the guitar answers with poetic soliloquys. As the movement intensifies and the soloist and quartet play together, the material in the guitar part becomes more impassioned and virtuosic, with elaborate embellishment. “Midnight: Dance” features a macabre minuet, replete with castanet inspired triplet figures, and eerie string tremolos, and elastic lines reminiscent of early 20th century Vienna. The guitar cadenza also evokes the flamenco tradition, with rasgeuado strums, rich vibrato in embroidered bass figures, fleet tremolo, and brisk scalar passages. The final movement, “Dawn: Escape,” is vigorous and rhythmic, with Godfrey treating the quintet like a mini orchestra, eliciting an exciting array of colors. The movement drives to a powerful climax of repeated chords, closing with a surprisingly and delightful passage of ricochet articulations passed through the quartet, ending with a glissando up to a light hearted final chord.
To Mourn, To Dance (2013) for string quartet plus cello takes its title from Ecclesiastes, in a passage that advises that there is a time to mourn and a time to dance. With this piece, Godfrey posits that “often one is left with little choice but to attempt both at once.” Opening with a free, elegiac cello solo, the other strings enter by filling out the implied harmony at the of the solo line’s phrase. The violin takes over the main voice and into the high register, over taut tremolos in the ensemble. Godfrey takes the opportunity to afforded by the extra cello to create a rich low register presence with expansive duo cello lines, balancing out the two violins. The quintet is mono-thematic, with each movement presenting its own variation on the same theme, as Godfrey inverts, augments, and manipulates it in the score. The second movement, “Danza,” is a moderate dance that moves between meters and opens with the most discrete statement of this theme. An initial lilting groove in seven with phrases separated by brief pauses develops into a continuous texture where the primary line is passed up through the ensemble. As in the other works on the album, imitation with variation is a core component of Godfrey’s style, keeping the material tethered to the central motive as it spins out with invention. The “Interlude” is eerie and mysterious, opening with a responsive passage between viola solo and tremolos in the ensemble before it... The jaunty subject in the “Fugue-Tarantella”is determined and brassy, and added to its syncopated countersubject creates a considerable amount of density and rhythmic energy in the opening statements of the exposition, its angularity at times reminiscent of Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue Op. 130. Godfrey creates contrast by featuring subsets of the instrumentation, introducing pizzicato as a timbral element, and placing episodic material within more flowing sections. A prominent inversion of the fugue subject is heard in the violin near the midway of the movement, with cello pizzicati stabbing away at the countersubject’s interrupting motivic cells. Godfrey closes the movement with a dramatic climax of intertwined imitative counterpoint, followed by an exuberant coda adorned with several surprise twists and turns.
- Dan Lippel
Ricordanza–Speranza recorded March 17, 2011 at American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
Toward Light recorded September 29, 2023 at Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA
To Mourn, To Dance recorded October 20, 2019 at Don Buchwald Hall, Leonard and Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY
Produced by Judith Sherman
Engineering and editing assistant: Jeanne Velonis
Special thanks to Joe Chilorio
Piano technician Joel Bernache (tracks 1-3)
Photos: Paula Artal-Isbrand (Drakes Island Beach, Wells, Maine)
Design: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Daniel S. Godfrey (b. 1949) has earned awards and commissions from the J. S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Music Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, among many others. His music has been performed by soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is founder and co-director of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music (on the Maine coast) and is co-author of Music Since 1945, published by Schirmer Books. Godfrey’s works are recorded on the Albany, Bridge, CRI (New World), GM, Innova, Klavier, Koch, and Mark recording labels, in addition to this new project on New Focus Recordings. His music is available through publishers Carl Fischer, G. Schirmer, and Opus Imprints.
Godfrey received his M.M. in music composition from the Yale University School of Music and his Ph.D. in composition from the University of Iowa. He is Professor Emeritus at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media, and Design in Boston, Massachusetts, where he recently served for eight years as Chair of Music. Prior to his appointment at Northeastern, Godfrey was Professor of Music Composition, Theory and History at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music. He has also held guest faculty appointments in composition at the Eastman School of Music and the Indiana University School of Music. He currently resides in Skaneateles, New York.
Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world — with appearances at major venues across the United States, Europe, and Asia — for four decades. Its discography of over forty albums has won critical acclaim and expanded the quartet repertoire for future generations of string quartets.
Founded in 1985, the Cassatt Quartet now celebrates its 40th anniversary with an ongoing dedication to connecting composers, audiences, and communities in dialogue, and to championing the music of living American composers, whose music has been central to the quartet’s focus and mission. Among recent highlights are commissions and premieres of new works by Joan Tower, Laura Kaminsky, and Victoria Bond; mentoring gifted student composers at educational institutions such as Bennington, Williams College, SUNY Purchase; the quartet’s own Seal Bay Festival; and this CD, featuring collaborative works written for the Cassatt String Quartet, by the ensemble’s longtime colleague and collaborator Daniel Strong Godfrey.
The Cassatt Quartet has been fortunate to enjoy a partnership for nearly the quartet’s entire lifespan with Daniel Strong Godfrey. This relationship, both artistic and personal, has led to a significant body of works commissioned and written for the quartet. We are thankful to our extraordinary collaborators Ursula Oppens, Eliot Fisk, and Nicole Johnson — and to the group’s former members, who contributed during the course of this recording project, which came to fruition over a ten-year period. And we are deeply grateful to Dan Godfrey for his friendship and artistry; we hope you love these extraordinary works as much as we do.
Heralded as “queen of contemporary music” by Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times, Ursula Oppens, a legend among American pianists, is widely admired, particularly for her original and perceptive readings of new music, but also for her knowing interpretations of the standard repertoire. With five Grammy nominations to her credit, Ms. Oppens established her reputation early on with a classic recording of Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated. No other artist alive today has commissioned and premiered more new works for the piano that have entered the permanent repertoire.
As guest soloist, Ms. Oppens has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony, and London Philharmonic Orchestra, among others, and has collaborated with the Arditti, Cassatt, Juilliard, and Pacifica quartets. Ursula Oppens teaches at Mannes College, and is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
Classical guitarist Eliot Fisk was the last direct disciple of legendary guitarist, Andres Segovia, and also the last direct student of the renowned harpsichordist and brilliant scholar, Ralph Kirkpatrick. As such he seeks to embody the great romantic tradition and the best of modernity.. He has revolutionized the guitar repertoire through countless transcriptions spanning five centuries, including the entire solo repertoire for lute, violin, and cello by J.S. Bach and the twenty-four Capricci, Op. 1 of Niccolo Paganini, featured along with numerous other works on more than 40 CD’s. He is the dedicatee of numerous new works inspired by his dramatic performing style. These include groundbreaking compositions for solo guitar, for guitar in a myriad of chamber music combinations, and for guitar and orchestra by composers such as Luciano Berio, Robert Beaser, George Rochberg, Leonardo Balada, Xavier Montsalvatge, Nicholas Maw, Kurt Schwertsik, Ralf Gawlick, and Daniel Strong Godfrey. Eliot Fisk has performed on five continents to immense public and critical acclaim. Renowned the world over as a mentor to younger colleagues, he has revolutionized the pedagogy of the classical guitar, having taught in five languages at the Hochschule für Musik Köln, the Universität Mozarteum (Salzburg), the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston), the Accademia Chigiana (Siena, Italy) and at Yale University, where following his graduation from Yale College in 1976 (summa cum laude) he was asked to found the guitar department at the Yale School of Music in 1977 at the age of 22.
American cellist, Nicole Johnson, is the third generation of professional musicians in her family and enjoys a diverse career as chamber musician, soloist, and educator. From 2003-2014, she was the cellist of the Cassatt String Quartet. Ms. Johnson devotes much of her time to nurturing young musicians of all levels, from their very first forays into cello music through the college level. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Yale and Syracuse universities, taught at the Bowdoin International Music Festival and National Cello Institute, served as the director of the Cushing Cello Camp, and is currently on the faculty at School for Strings and Special Music School. Growing up in the Chicago area, her early studies were with Nell Novak and her father, Marc Johnson. She went on to work with Andres Diaz, Alan Harris (earning a B.M. from the Cleveland Institute of Music), Christoph Henkel in Germany, and Joel Krosnick (earning an M.M. from Juilliard). In addition to her commitment to classical music, she also has a deep interest in Balkan folk music, including performing on the gadulka, a traditional Bulgarian fiddle.
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 …
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