Moto Finale

Frederic Glesser composer
Kim Diehnelt composer
Michael Slayton composer
L Peter Deutsch composer
Robert Fleisher composer
David Klock composer
Joanna Estelle composer

Trio Casals
Alexandr Kislitsyn violin
Ovidiu Marinescu cello
Anna Kislitsyna piano

Release Date: December 10, 2021

Catalog #: NV6388

Format: Digital

21st Century

Chamber

Piano Trio

MOTO FINALE brings the beloved chamber music series to a close with a number of works inspired by nature, loss, spiritual connection, and music of the past. The seasoned Trio Casals returns for this seventh and final installment to perform the works of seven composers in a diverse and conclusive capstone of modern composition. A fitting album to end the series, MOTO FINALE rewards the attention of listeners as it leads them on a journey of interweaving experiences. Trauma and chaos mingle with tranquility, nostalgia, melancholy, and hope, painting a broad emotional landscape.

Listen

Hear the full album on YouTube

Stream/Buy

Choose your platform

Buy Album: Amazon (digital download) Qobuz (24-bit download)

Performance Video

Joanna Estelle – Bobby’s Song | Trio Casals

Track Listing & Credits

#	Title	Composer	Performer
01	Piano Trio No. 2	Frederic Glesser	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	11:04
02	Yarmouth Time	Kim Diehnelt	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	10:49
03	Through Stone Door	Michael Slayton	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	6:34
04	Winter 2005	L Peter Deutsch	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	5:28
05	Dumkyana (Variations On Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 90, “Dumky”)	Robert Fleisher	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	11:37
06	Water in Motion	David Klock	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	5:59
07	Bobby's Song	Joanna Estelle	Trio Casals \| Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano	4:50

Recorded June 4-8, 2021 at the Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport MA
Session Producer, Editing, Mixing & Mastering Brad Michel
Session Engineer Tom Stephenson

Executive Producer Bob Lord

Executive A&R Sam Renshaw
A&R Director Brandon MacNeil
A&R Quinton Blue, Chris Robinson, Morgan Santos

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Production Director Levi Brown
Audio Director Lucas Paquette
Production Assistant Martina Watzková

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Sara Warner

Artist Information

Frederic Glesser

Composer

Frederic Glesser grew up near Toledo OH where his early musical influences were rock, jazz, and music of the Baroque era. He studied jazz with Gene Parker and had flute studies with Kay Hartsfeld. He was later educated at Kent State University (Bachelor of Music) in Ohio where he studied composition with James Waters and David Stewart, and studied flute with Raymond DeMattia and Maurice Sharp, former principal flutist of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Learn More

Kim Diehnelt

Composer

Kim Diehnelt (b. 1963) is compelled to create beauty through her work as a conductor, composer, and artistic coach. Trained in the United States and Europe, Kim Diehnelt established her musical crafts in Finland and Switzerland, leading Baltic, Russian, and European ensembles. Trained in the United States and Europe, Kim Diehnelt established her musical crafts in Finland and Switzerland, leading Baltic, Russian, and European ensembles. She currently resides in Burlington VT. Diehnelt has been composing works for solo instruments, chamber, orchestral and choral ensembles since 2011 when, after decades on the conductor’s podium, she “suddenly had something to say.”

Learn More

Michael K. Slayton

Composer

Michael K. Slayton is an American composer who has written works in a cross-section of musical genres, with specific emphasis on chamber music. His continuing dedication to the value of artistic exchange has afforded him opportunity to partner with distinguished performers all over the world. His music, published by ACA, Inc. (BMI), is regularly programmed in the U.S. and abroad, including Chemnitz, Seitz, Leipzig, Droyssig, and Weimar, Germany; Graz, Austria; Paris,Tours, and Marquette-lez-Lille, France; Kristiansund, Norway; Aviero, Portugal; Brussles, Belgium; Johannesburg and Potchefstroom, South Africa; London, UK; and New York, NY.

Learn More

L Peter Deutsch

Composer

L Peter Deutsch is a native of Massachusetts, now living in Sonoma County CA, and British Columbia, Canada. He writes primarily for small instrumental or a capella vocal ensembles, spanning styles from devotional to romantic to jazzy, and from Renaissance to early 20th century. Works to date include four choral commissions; releases through PARMA Recordings include music for chorus, string quartet, woodwind and brass quintets, piano trio (featuring work with Trio Casals), and full orchestra.

Learn More

Robert Fleisher

Composer

Robert Fleisher’s music has been heard throughout the United States and in more than a dozen other countries and is available on Albany, Capstone, Centaur, Navona, Neuma, Petrichor, Phasma, PnOVA, Sarton, and SEAMUS labels. His acoustic works have been praised as “eloquent” (Ann Arbor News), “lovely and emotional” (Musicworks), “astoundingly attractive” (Perspectives of New Music), and “ingenious” (The Strad).

Learn More

David Klock

Composer

David Klock is a composer of instrumental concert music as well as collaborative pieces for multimedia projects. His works have been featured in "Playas de Tijuana Mural Project," a documentary by Lizbeth de la Cruz Santana, Humanizing Deportation, a community-based digital storytelling project, The Neighborhood Arts Collective, a multidisciplinary arts organization, and published by T.U.X. People’s Music.

Learn More

Joanna Estelle

Composer

Joanna Estelle (Storoschuk) is a Canadian composer, lyricist, and arranger, born of Ukrainian parentage. Her music has won critical acclaim from Parliament Hill, Ottawa (Canada) to London (United Kingdom), Barcelona (Spain), Carnegie Hall (New York City), and elsewhere around the world. Estelle studied classical piano and theory with the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) as a young person, but her parents deterred her from pursuing music as a career. Instead, she graduated in Psychology and English (Brock, 1972), then went on to study management accounting. However, her enthusiasm for music never waned.

Learn More

Trio Casals

Ensemble

Since making a highly-praised debut at the 1996 edition of the Pablo Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, Trio Casals has delighted audiences with spectacular virtuosity, engaging enthusiasm, and exquisite musical elegance. The ensemble released several commercial albums with PARMA Recordings and Navona Records to critical acclaim with Ovidiu Marinescu and past members including Anna Kislitysyna, Alexandr Kislitsyn, and Sylvia Ahramjian, from the beloved MOTO series to A GRAND JOURNEY and more. Marinescu remains in the current ensemble line up, with Mădălina-Claudia Dănilă and Timothy Schwarz joining in 2024.

Learn More

Ovidiu Marinescu

Cellist, Composer

Ovidiu Marinescu is internationally recognized as a cellist, composer, conductor, and educator. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Weill Hall, Merkin Hall (New York), the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Holywell Room in Oxford, Oriental Art Center in Shanghai, and has appeared as soloist with the London Symphony, New York Chamber Symphony, the National Radio Orchestra of Romania, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Helena, Great Falls, Portsmouth, and Newark Symphonies, Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Philharmonic, Limeira Symphony in Brazil, Orquesta de Extremadura in Spain, and most of the professional orchestras in his native Romania. The album LONDON CELLO CONNECTION features Marinescu and London Symphony Orchestra in eight newly commissioned cello concertos by North American composers.

Learn More

Anna Kislitsyna

Pianist

Pianist and harpsichordist Anna Kislitsyna made her solo debut at age 10 with the Omsk Symphony Orchestra. She remains in high demand as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and educator. Recent season highlights include five new album productions with PARMA Recordings and two release concerts in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, performing Haydn and Shostakovich Piano Concertos with Helena Symphony and Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony Orchestra, and returning to the Omsk Philharmonic as a soloist to give the inaugural performance on the new harpsichord.

Learn More

Notes

Piano Trio No. 2

Piano Trio No. 2 was the last piece I fi nished while still living in Miami, before moving to the Asheville area and the mountains of western North Carolina. This score presents bustling, hectic, and chaotic music, perhaps emblematic of a large metropolitan area. The trio opens with fast, heavy, repetitive chordal structures on the piano, and the violin and cello almost immediately introduce a new motif. In quick succession, another motif is introduced by the piano using a syncopated rhythm. All of these motives are heard throughout the work. Again introduced in the piano — in contrasting material — is a triplet sixteenth-note pattern soon picked up also by the violin with an anchoring sustained note in the cello.

— Frederic Glesser

Yarmouth Time - For Violin And Cello

In the Spring of 2018, I spent three months on Cousins Island off the coast of Yarmouth ME as the KISMET Foundation Artist-in-Residence. Yarmouth Time reflects my impressions during this period of being surrounded by intense weather, nature, and beauty.

After an introductory “sunrise,” I capture my experience of two nor’easters with stormy gusts of wind and snow, leaping waves, swaying trees, and shifting gales. As the winds swirl away into calmness, a song arises as a nod to the warm hearts of the people of Yarmouth, echoing their welcoming town motto “Our Latchstring Always Out.” Seabirds, gulls, and ospreys add their own commentary.

Then, I tapped into the feel and enjoyment of walking the local trails, moving through nature, and taking in the scenery, bird calls, fresh air, and vibrant colors. Just before setting off on this walkabout, however, I inserted a sound from the Casco Bay seascape which was new to me — a lobster boat motor.

The work concludes with a sound-portrait of the frequently seen yet ever awe-inspiring pinkhued sunset over the eastern coastline.

— Kim Diehnelt

Through Stone Door

“Stone Door” is the name of what is now a hiking trail near the Savage Gulf in South Cumberland State Park TN (part of the Appalachian Mountain Chain’s Cumberland Plateau). The “Great Stone Door” is a natural doorway — a ten-foot wide crack in the rim of one of the canyons — used by generations of Cherokee and Chickamauga as a means of passage to the river at the bottom of the gorge. As native peoples were eventually driven from the area, it is believed that passing through Stone Door served as their primary exit — or escape route. This work makes an effort to capture not only my own nostalgia for the place and my feelings of wonder about it, but also the pervasive sense of melancholy stemming from all that has happened there in its long history. To my mind, the idea of one’s moving through Stone Door is both literal and fi gurative, both physical and spiritual.

— Michael Slayton

Winter 2005

In February 2005, in the process of recovering from a brief and unhappy romance with a concert pianist, I wrote a short, somber piano work titled Winter in a style of very pure Baroque counterpoint, similar to the J.S. Bach Two-Part Inventions. Then when PARMA announced an opportunity to work with Trio Casals in the Fall of 2020, I couldn’t resist the chance to collaborate again with one of my favorite ensembles, and developed the piece into the present Winter 2005. It begins with the original two-voice piano material broken into three sections, each of which is followed by development for all three instruments, in which the bars of the original melody alternate seamlessly with new phrases; this is followed by a new fugal section, a little more polyphonic development of the original material, and finally a tutti restatement with the strings carrying the two melodic lines.

Early music counterpoint is my first love in composition; the challenge I always face in deploying it is creating something that the modern listener — more accustomed to harmony based “classical” music — will find enjoyable and not too formal or artificial. In Winter 2005, I like to think that the lyricism of the violin lines helps bridge those idioms.

— L Peter Deutsch

Dumkyana (Variations On Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 90, “Dumky”)

A Slavic ballad genre typified by marked contrasts of slower and faster passages, the dumka (“thought” or “memory”) inspired works by Borodin, Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 (1891). Exemplifying the Romantic era’s “progressive tonality,” his six Dumky are all in different (and largely distantly related) keys: E minor, C# minor, A major, D minor, Eb major, and C minor.

Roughly one third the length of Dvořák’s trio, Dumkyana is a single movement comprising three solos, three duos, three trios, and a coda. In the order they are heard, the duo and trio sections variously quote, rearrange, or otherwise transform portions of Dvořák’s six corresponding Dumky (in their original keys). Lacking such direct Dumky references, the solo passages instead feature chord progressions and a unifying 12-tone row (first heard in the opening cello solo) derived from Dvořák’s harmonic scheme. As Dumkyana progresses, brief echoes of music by Beethoven, Berg, Debussy, and Rimsky-Korsakov can also be heard.

Dumkyana (orig. Variations and Soliloquies) was composed for the Amicizia Trio (Song-A Cho, Stephanie Iovine, Johanna Kosak), which premiered it in 2014 during a Midwest tour including Columbia College Chicago, Northern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois in a program also featuring works by Zack Browning, Durwynne Hsieh, Tim Schirmer, and Daniel Temkin.

— Robert Fleisher

Water in Motion

Water in Motion was inspired by the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado. It is an imagining of the sounds of the canyon just outside the town of Fort Collins, over the course of a 24 hour period. The beginning of the piece is set in the middle of the night, when the canyon is quiet and nearly still. Initially, the piano and cello combine to give a sense of a dark, clear sky, cool air, and calm water. As morning breaks, and the sounds of jumping fish and insects can be heard, the music
reflects those changes; the violin in particular can be heard imitating buzzing insects. As the day progresses and becomes more active, the music swells and grows, conjuring images of rushing rapids, bird calls, and deeper waters. As those sounds diminish and the landscape returns to calm during the evening, the original musical ideas return in a new form. This is designed to leave the listener with a sense of tranquility, the same type of contented feeling one
gets after a day spent in water and sun.

Musically, the main theme — a descending series of parallel thirds that mimics falling water — can first be heard at 0:37 in the piano, though it is difficult to hear its continuity until 0:58. This theme returns in a variety of forms throughout the piece, but can be heard most clearly in all three voices at 2:15. The secondary theme, played by the piano and cello, opens the piece and closes the piece. At its closing, however, the piano is left unresolved on the dominant chord of
this theme, hinting at the cyclical nature of both the music and the water it represents.

Historically, the Cache la Poudre River has been home to Arapaho peoples, fur trappers, farmers, ranchers, university students, and a vast diversity of residents. Today, it provides irrigation, drinking water, and recreation for residents and visitors alike along Colorado’s Front Range mountains. It feeds farms and ranches that grow food for the entire nation in an environment where water is scarce. Its source is primarily snowfall, and its fragility is on full display during summers that follow particularly dry winters. The resulting fires and floods of the recent past have left an indelible mark on this part of the country. Fortunately, there are organizations working tirelessly for water conservation and climate justice throughout Colorado, which have ripple effects throughout the United States.

— David Klock

Bobby's Song

In 1937, my mother’s nine year old brother Jaroslav — known as “Bobby” — was abducted and brutally murdered. Bobby was a sweet, happy boy who was always singing. He was my mother’s best friend and she never recovered from this traumatic loss at the age of 11. “Bobby’s Song” is what I imagine he might have sung with his grieving sister from beyond the grave to comfort her and remind her of happier, more innocent times. The opening piano measures and first iteration of the poignant main theme by the violin invoke my young mother’s tears falling and the sadness in her heart as she visited the site of his murder daily for many months to grieve in private. Hearing her crying from beyond the veil, Bobby responds in kind, echoing the theme through the voice of the cello. The mood then shifts while they both recall the fun that they had playing together until their joy was shattered by an unspeakable planned crime, expressed by an extended fermata. The beginning of the third iteration of the main theme is unaccompanied by piano to reflect the stark reality that both of their lives had been changed forever. However, the re-entry of the piano and introduction of an element of hope in the closing measures mirrors the expectation that my mother always had of being reunited with Bobby when she passed away in 2017. It is comforting to know that the two siblings are now together again in spirit after 80 years of separation.

— Joanna Estelle

Moto Finale

Listen

Stream/Buy

Performance Video

Track Listing & Credits