Capping an exhilarating, 15-year association, this release features four stunning works by Pierre Jalbert, “an acknowledged chamber-music master” (The New Yorker) – three in their World Premiere recordings, including a Copland House commission – in performances by the internationally-acclaimed Music from Copland House ensemble.
The medieval alchemist, stealthily converting one element into another, finds his modern counterpart in Pierre Jalbert, who revels in the transformation of musical ideas. Jalbert’s music – urgent, mysterious, and instrumentally brilliant – veers between propulsive and reflective, secular and sacred, with a spiky, syncopated rhythmic drive animated by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Copland, and the ethereal, suspended calm of Gregorian chant.
The CD’s title composition, his piano quartet Secret Alchemy (2012), alludes to the mystery of creation and the euphoria of discovery. His intense, eventful String Trio (2008) slowly emerges, evolves, explodes, and ultimately circles back to its origins, all within a tightly-written, one-movement arch scarcely longer than 10 minutes. Crossings, a Copland House commission, traces Jalbert’s own French-Canadian ancestry, and is driven by a different kind of transformation – the migration of people voyaging into new places. The Piano Trio No. 1, ferocious and serene, was wildly hailed at its New York Premiere by Music from Copland House, and has become one of the composer’s most often performed works.
Jalbert’s close association with Copland House began in 1999, and included two Residency Awards, the Copland House/Borromeo Quartet Award, and the Copland House-Hoff Barthelson Music School Commission. Music from Copland House’s New York Premiere in 2001 of his Piano Trio No. 1 was the first of many performances the ensemble has given of that and other Jalbert works, including the World Premiere in 2011 of Crossings, which it commissioned.
This recording features the Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists of Music from Copland House, and was produced for the COPLAND HOUSE BLEND label by multi-Grammy Award-winner Judith Sherman. Secret Alchemy was supported by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Friends of Copland House.