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New Recordings Feature Chamber Music by Pierre Jalbert

Sep. 21, 2023

Two new recordings featuring music by Pierre Jalbert have been released.

The Boston Chamber Music Society's first of three discs titled "Our Art in Time: BCMS Commissions, Vol. 1" features Pierre Jalbert's Street Antiphons for clarinet (bass clarinet), violin, cello, and piano. The work was co-commissioned by the Boston Chamber Music Society, Da Camera of Houston, SOLI Chamber Ensemble and Voices of Change. Jalbert notes: 

"Street Antiphons attempts to present and contrast secular and sacred music. The 'secular' music (music of the street) comes in the form of rhythmically driving sections, while the 'sacred' music is often lyrical and suspended. The first movement is set up by each instrument entering and adding to a very syncopated groove (with many mixed meter changes). After a clarinet and violin canon-like duo over the rhythmic accompaniment of pizzicato cello and piano, the initial process reverses itself and the instruments exit one by one. The second movement really contains two movements in one – it begins as a lyrical and ethereal slow movement, with the use of many string harmonics, but gradually transitions into a rapid scherzo-like movement, with the use of the bass clarinet. The final movement is a set of variations – the theme is a Gregorian Chant entitled 'O Antiphon'. The variations become more and more animated and after the final, extremely disjunct, variation, there is a reprise of music from the first movement, only to dissipate and once again recall the more 'sacred' music from the piece."


Street Antiphons: I. Driving, Cool, In a Groove/Pierre Jalbert/Boston Chamber Music Society

Purchase the disc here.

Additionally, Orchid Classics has just released "Terra Incognita" a recording of Pierre Jalbert's String Quartet No. 5, performed by the Escher Quartet. The four-movement work was commissioned by the Houston Friends of Chamber Music, Inc. and the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University and premiered by the Emerson String Quartet in 2011 at Rice University.


String Quartet No. 5, "Terra Incognita": I. Prelude/Pierre Jalbert/Escher String Quartet

Purchase "Terra Incognita" here.

To learn more about Pierre Jalbert, visit schott-music.com.

Pierre Jalbert
Street Antiphons (2015)
for clarinet (bass clarinet), violin, cello, and piano
16'

String Quartet No. 5 (2011)
27'

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