Twinning

Twinning, for violin and piano, was commissioned in 1994 by the California Association of Professional Music Teachers. The premiere performance took place on January 27, 1995 in San Francisco, with Fred Lifsitz, violin and Karen Rosenak, piano. Twinning was subsequently named second place winner of the Music Teachers National Association's annual Composers Competition. Counterpoint, pungent harmonies and jazzy syncopations abound in the mercurial opening movement. In contrast, the contemplative, yet uneasy mood of the middle adagio, with its sudden whirrings and sudden stillnesses, creates a feeling of suspension, which is finally broken by the vivacious energy of the final presto. This last movement is cast in the form of a rondo; in the course of it, music from the first movement makes its appearance twice as the outcome of episodic developments, inevitably bringing about the return of the rondo theme. Michelle Dulak writes of Twinning: “...there is also something akin to the growth of ‘twinned’ crystals in the way much of the piece proceeds – the violin and piano beginning from unison pitches, then branching out into their own trajectories of growth.”