Various From The Valley Of Baca - The Chamber Music Of David Carpenter

Composer David Carpenters PARMA debut, From the Valley of the Baca, features three works that illustrate the expansive scope of his compositional style. From the lyrical Trio, to the powerfully poetic title work for baritone and piano, to the romantically-inclined Sonata, From the Valley of the Baca demonstrates the composers ability to express his artistic vision in a wide variety of musical genres. The harmonic language and brooding character of the Trio, which recalls the introspective character of Shostakovichs String Quartet in C minor, op. 110, is balanced by Carpenters penchant for long, lyrical lines, particularly in the Trios second movement. Carpenter cites two sources of inspiration for his song cycle From the Valley of Baca, one musical and one poetic: His work Job for baritone and piano, based on the book from the Hebrew Bible, sparked the idea of writing a song cycle based on the poetry of the Jewish-American author Emma Lazarus. One of Lazaruss, poems, The Valley of Baca, which references the 84th psalm, also inspired Carpenter to intersperse the verses of this psalm, set in its original Hebrew, throughout the song cycle, serving as a counterbalance to the English texts of Lazaruss poems. In 2015, Carpenter composed a work entitled Rhapsody for pianist Katelyn Bouska as a companion piece to Chopins Piano Sonata in B minor, op. 58, both of which Bouska performed at a recital in Paris that year. At Bouskas behest, Carpenter added two movements to this composition to form a sonata, employing a sighing, chromatic motive from the Rhapsody to bind the three movements together. Emphasizing again that the past informs the work of many artists, something of Chopins musical style, as well as that of other Romantic-era composers, finds voice in this new work. While he has drawn musical inspiration from past masters, Carpenters music is intended neither as a pastiche of earlier musical styles nor an anachronism.