SKU: PR.14440398S

UPC: 680160030101.

Primosch's String Quartet No. 3 sets out as a theme and variations, but a sudden Fantasia finds its way into the mix. Upon returning to another variation, we find elements of the Fantasia now appearing, leading to a viola cadenza and the ultimate unison re-statement of a slow variation. Composed for the Ying Quartet and commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, String Quartet No. 3 had its premiere in 1999. For advanced performers. Duration: 20'.

SKU: PR.144402180

UPC: 680160027156. 9.5 x 13 inches.

The concerts and exhibits of the Cleveland Museum of Art were an important formative influence for me during my student days. So when the invitation came to create a new work celebrating this institution on its seventy-fifth anniversary, I was not only happy to accept, but knew immediately that I wanted to write a piece that would somehow relate specifically to the museum. I decided to make the work a reflection on a painting in the museum's collection: Zurbaran's The Holy House of Nazareth. My quartet is not program music in a narrative sense, but rather a kind of meditation that takes its tone from this painting's remarkable integration of intense affect, mysterious repose and secret geometry. Besides Zurbaran's painting, the piece is occupied with a purely musical object of contemplation: the hymn tune Picardy, best known with the text Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. This tune permeates the harmonic and melodic life of the quartet, sometimes appearing in a very simple, straightforward fashion, but often hidden amidst more complex structures. I was attracted to the melody for its musical qualities, but later realized that the hymn's text also resonates with the mood of the painting; the words speak of a reverent awe, of cherubim with sleepless eye, and of the mystery of the Incarnate Word who must suffer: King of kings, yet born of Mary...