Program Note:   

The sixth piano trio superficially resembles a suite but is in fact comprised of a fistful of motives and harmonic ideas sewn tightly together over the course of five interconnected rondos. Cantina at the Gates of Hell is a quick rondo alternating a heroic fanfare, a shocking cluster whose plume consists of shards of octatonic melodies, and a tweaky, out-of-tune barroom piano rag. At one point, the pianist is called upon to dampen certain strings inside the piano, as though those keys are busted. Next, the shortest story ever told, For sale: baby shoes, never worn came to mind. I imagined the ensemble as supplying salon music for the restaurant in which the quip, “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the revolution” is delivered by the character of Victor Komarovsky in Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago. The performers take turns singing snatches of “The Internationale” as they play, mimicking the sound of marchers’ voices drifting in from the street. A spiritual and prescient child, my seven year old son has named the “treasure chest” that I built for him one Christmas. He calls it Seamie’s Reliquary because, as he explains it, “dreams, visions, precious objects, and love” are stored there. Pennywhistle Jigeánnai is in 14/8 time. It is a third rondo combining the rattling jig-tune from the first tune, snatches of the second movement’s ostinato accompaniment plushly harmonized, and a return of the opening of the trio as a whole flowing into a swatch of the romantic tune from the third movement, before subsiding into a tender rumination on a plagal cadence from the fourth.