Winter Trio

Year: 2013

Heading: for Piano, Violin, and 'Cello

Movement Titles:
1. Panels of Melancholy
2. Icicles
3. Skating

First Performance:
12 April 2015
Eroica Trio
Beckman Auditorium, Caltech
Pasadena, CA

Duration: 15:30

Press:
When describing the piece to the audience before the performance, Torke couldn't stand still onstage but kept bouncing back and forth while he spoke. "Winter Trio" is, likewise, unstill winter, not meditative but, rather, a Midwesterner embracing the cold and seeming happy to reflect from a warmer vista. —Mark Swed, L.A. Times

Program Note:
Growing up in a suburb of Milwaukee, winter was a dominant season, and one I loved. I think people are apt to get more pensive—lonely thoughts intrude—when daylight is scarce, and it’s a challenge to stay warm. But the darker moods are lifted with the beautiful shapes of icicles forming beneath the gutters of houses, or the swirls of children skating on man-made ponds. These are some of the images I had in mind while composing this piece, in the winter of 2013. The three movements (1. Panels of Melancholy; 2. Icicles; 3. Skating), share a single recurring theme that, though subtle, can be heard in each, though the use of that theme is quite contrasting, as those movement titles would suggest.