by Nicolette Cheauré
A concert program comprised entirely of piano quintets is fairly uncommon, but on Thursday, December 17th at 7:00 pm at the Steinway Gallery you can hear three such pieces on the same program, as part of the Local 4 Music Fund’s “Tuning In” virtual concert series. You can hear piano quintets by Shostakovich and Amy Beach, performed by violinists Jennifer Walvoord and Diana Pepelea-Vardi, violist Esther Nahm, cellist Derek Snyder, and pianist Eric Charnofsky. The concert will also feature Charnofsky’s own composition, 5 by 5.
The piece was commissioned for and premiered by the Los Angeles-based group Pacific Serenades, and partly modeled off of Meditations on a Suicide, a film score Charnofsky composed in 1989. The work hasn’t been performed since 2011, “So this is bringing it back nine years later,” Charnofsky said during a recent Zoom interview. Specializing in premiering new works, Pacific Serenades highlighted a composer from the area at every concert, and their only requirement was to “compose something that is of lasting beauty.” In 5 by 5, commission number 101, Charnofsky utilized the compositional freedom he was granted. The title refers to the instrumentation and number of movements. Each — Intrada, Chaconne, Tarantella, Meditation and Postscript — features a different instrument and a specifically chosen interval, bouncing between celebration, resonance, quirkiness, and thoughtfulness. [Read more…]