Chrome

Year: 1993

Heading: for flute and piano

Movement Titles: in three movements

First Performance:
17 November 1996
Colden Center, Queens, New York
Marina Piccinini, fl/ Andreas Haefliger, pft

Duration:16'

Program Note:
The sound of the upper range of the piano and the flute is surprisingly complementary. In parts of each of the three movements of Chrome, the flute and the right hand of the piano work together in such close proximity, that, especially in the third movement, it becomes hard to discern which is which.

But throughout, the flute maintains a clear leadership role, whether in the pointed staccato notes of the first movement, or the languid lines of the second, or the sharp, unsettled slurs of the third. The active rhythms of the outer movements offset an underlying harmonic stasis, whereas when the musical activity slows down in the middle movement, the harmonies move much more extensively.

Chrome was written during the summer of 1993, and later revised in 1996. The duration is 16 minutes.