piano quartet
2011

Duration 10’
Instrumentation violin, viola, cello, piano
First Performance 30 June 2011 Cheltenham International Music Festival 2011, Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham, UK; Alexandra Wood (violin), Cian O’Duill (viola), Robin Michael (cello), and Huw Watkins (piano)
Commissioned by the Cheltenham International Music Festival as a result of winning the RPS Composition Prize,  supported by the Susan Bradshaw Composers Fund
Recording Replay  features on Bray’s Debut Disc At the Speed of Stillness. Download the album from iTunes

Further Performances
29.7.11 Verbier Festival, Cinema Verbier, Chi-Hui Yen piano, Vlad Maistorovici violin, Marc Sabbah viola, Maksym Dyedikov cello
31.7.11 Verbier Festival, L’Eglise Verbier, Chi-Hui Yen piano, Vlad Maistorovici violin, Marc Sabbah viola, Maksym Dyedikov cello
9.5.12 ‘Soundings’ Austrian Cultural Forum London, Fidelio Trio (Darragh Morgan, violin; Robin Michael, cello; Mary Dullea, piano)
2.6.13 Platform 33, Kings Place London, The Benyounes Quartet with Joseph Houston piano
6.8.15 Copenhagen Summer Festival, Copenhagen Piano Quartet
9.8.15 Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark, Copenhagen Piano Quartet

http://composersedition.com/charlotte-bray-replay

As one of the winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2010 Composition Prize, Bray was commissioned to write this work for the 2011 Cheltenham Music Festival with prize money from the Susan Bradshaw Composers’ Fund.

As if engaged in an intimate conversation, agile cantabile lines are woven quietly together to form the opening of Replay. This is the first of three contrasting musical identities that the piece travels through before returning to a variation of each. The music flows constantly between these idiosyncrasies. The structure was prompted by images of spherical trigonometry. The second section is dark, rough and earthy. A low, rumbling piano line sits under the strings that, in rhythmic unison, build the tension with syncopated patterns. Repetitive staccato gestures in the piano cut through, joined shortly after by the cello playing pizzicato. While these elements continue underneath, a tender solo violin line takes centre stage, preceding an intense third section, extreme in terms of register and dynamic, made up of syncopated riff-based variations. Gradually falling back into the weightless graceful material of the opening, the replay begins, with each section recognisable in character but distinctly different in its re-appearance.