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- Phil Shackleton - Duality for Violin and Piano
Phil Shackleton - Duality for Violin and Piano
Description
“Duality” for Violin and Piano, was composed specifically for the performers, Alex Russell and Joel Clifft, during the Covid shutdown.
Click here to view their performance on YouTube.
The work reflects influences from jazz, Ravel, Poulenc, Milhaud, Kapustin, Latin American rhythms, hoedown country fiddle, Stéphane Grappelli, Dave Grusin, and, of course, the blues.
Like many three movement works, the order of tempi is fast, slow, faster. The three movements are each ternary forms. The 2nd movement is moderately Gallic in its sensibilities, if not its specificities. The 1st and 3rd movements both make considerable use of double stops in places, in a sort of bent hoedown effect. Some of this resulted from having the violin replace the right hand of the piano during piano melodic leads. The end of the 3rd movement throws off the disguise and features the violin on a pure open string hoedown while the piano reprises some of the harmonic language of the 2nd movement.