Sonata quasi un capriccio

World premiere: Miranda Cuckson, violin and Steven Beck, piano. Merkin Concert Hall, Sept, 22, 2024

Sonata quasi un capriccio was composed for two longtime colleagues and collaborators, Miranda Cuckson and Steven Beck. The sonata’s lively opening, with insistent triplet figuration, leads to a mid-section that settles into a passacaglia, an older, repetitive form, in which the piano declaims and repeats (with some variation) a sustained melody and the violin comments upon it with increasing urgency. Triplet figures then return, introducing a fugato that builds to a more maestoso statement of the opening. The intensity is maintained as the work moves towards an affirmative conclusion.