- Joan Tower
For Daniel (2004)
- Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
Programme Note
For Daniel was written for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio with a commission sponsored by John and Helen Schaefer of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. It is dedicated to Joan Tower’s nephew, Daniel MacArthur, who passed away in 2003 after a long illness.
Composer Note:
The 17-minute work tries to convey the imagined struggles associated with someone who is facing a long-term terminal illness. The hopes, joys, depression, anger, deep turmoil and occasional serenity are in constant juxtaposition in this work, as they were throughout the last years of Daniel’s life. As the end approaches, so does the intensity. In my work, the intensity is loud and fast. Maybe Daniel’s approach was more accepting. May he now rest in peace.
—Joan Tower
Composer Note:
The 17-minute work tries to convey the imagined struggles associated with someone who is facing a long-term terminal illness. The hopes, joys, depression, anger, deep turmoil and occasional serenity are in constant juxtaposition in this work, as they were throughout the last years of Daniel’s life. As the end approaches, so does the intensity. In my work, the intensity is loud and fast. Maybe Daniel’s approach was more accepting. May he now rest in peace.
—Joan Tower
Reviews
At Tanglewood…the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio played...an important recent work, FOR DANIEL, by Joan Tower, composed as a memorial to a beloved nephew who died too young two years ago. The piece depicts the nephew’s complex of emotions as Tower experienced them during his long illness and its terminal stages on a lung machine; naturally it embodies the composer’s emotions too.
The rhythms of the piece are governed by the efforts of breathing. The music begins with violin and cello alone, together, then parting ways. The anguish is unremitting, but so is the vitality and the rush of raw emotions, often in conflict — there is acceptance as well as anger and grieving, as in a ravishing splash of water music that recalls Liszt or Ravel. The piano trio is an ideal medium for expressing the simultaneous presence of complementary or contradictory feelings.
The performance was as intense, strong, and involving as the piece, and there was a heartfelt ovation for Tower at its close.