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Programme Note

Composer's note:

I Annunciation
II Atonement
III Apotheosis

My piano quintet was begun in June of 1988 in New York and completed that September in Bellagio, Italy. Cast in three movements the work is approximately 24 minutes in length.

The subtitles Annunciation, Atonement and Apotheosis are not meant to imply a hidden programmatic agenda as much as they are intended to suggest something of the nature and profile of the individual movements as well as the arc of the composition as a whole. The second movement, Atonement is an adagio which emphasizes the lyrical, conversational and coloristic aspects of the work. It is the heart and core of the composition not only due to its central placement but more importantly because it is dramatically and structurally the major pivotal point of the work. By contrast, the fast outer movements with their more extraverted rhythmic energies deal with a sense of conflict in need of transformation (movement I) and the result of that transformation (movement III).

The composition of this work was greatly facilitated by Fellowship Residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy.


--Richard Danielpour