Six Seasons

In 2003, my clarinet teacher at the time, Laura DeLuca, or Laurie, as everyone calls her, exposed me to the Harold Wright and Boston Chamber Players recording of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, planting the seed for the foundation of my love for chamber music. I was entranced by the comradery and storytelling within the ensemble, as well as the weight of the work. When Laurie approached me 15 years later to commission me to compose a clarinet quintet for her, I felt the shadow of Brahms looming over me, both intimidating and equally inspiring, and knew that I wanted to incorporate some of the qualities that I admired so much in Brahms’ quintet into my own piece.

Six Seasons is named after the cookbook of the same title by Joshua McFadden, which Laurie introduced to me. As a dear friend and admired musician whose sound I became very familiar with over the years, I was drawn to the idea of creating a piece in six movements for Laurie, where each movement not only broke the year into six growing seasons, but also evolved into a snapshot of the complex life of a professional musician. As with Vivaldi, the piece begins in the early spring and journeys forward to winter.

The first movement, “Emerge,” has a pulsing energy, sometimes opening up the sound and range of the ensemble to welcome the sun, and other times retreating back to preserve and build energy in anticipation of the big push of late spring. Arpeggios later in the movement conjure arabesque imagery.

The second movement, “Push,” is the arrival of late spring, rhythmically charged and almost frantic at times. The dotted eighth repeated motif from the first movement becomes the basis for syncopation as I envision the ensemble as instruments in a drum kit. In the third movement representing early summer hiking season, “Gaining Perspective” uses the upper strings to inhale and exhale as if through a harmonica, while the cello pizzicato trudges like footsteps, occasionally pausing for breathless musings from the clarinet.

As a contrast, in the fourth movement, “Swelter,” brittle col legno and sul ponticello playing in the strings recreate a fragile post-forest-fire environment, and the high cello and viola solos on their C strings seem like strained laments. The fifth movement, “Thankful,” makes a nostalgic contemplation of fall and time with loved ones. The opening melody in the clarinet finally provides a full statement of melodic fragments presented earlier in the piece, which are embellished further throughout the movement. In the final movement, “Sparkle,” high gestures in the clarinet and violins glide like skiers in a glistening white landscape. A lyrical viola solo longs for warmth and, after one more round of dance-like gliding, succeeds in creating a deep foundation with the cello for a soaring clarinet line before the final grounding descent.

— Angelique Poteat