Allen Shawn

Cello and Piano

Composer's Note:

Episodes for Cello and Piano was composed in 1994 and was dedicated to  cellist Maxine Neuman and her husband, Reinhard Humburg. The six movements are arranged in a palindrome pattern according to their characters.  The opening is an ironic, stumbling March that sets the stage for the rest of the work, by merging angular, twelve-tone writing with fragments of a tonal melody that returns in several of the other movements. The second movement is a brief, good-humored waltz, with contrapuntal interplay between the instruments. The Adagio which follows is startlingly introspective and dark. The fourth movement, Vivo, is a boisterous, ebullient dance, echoing the tonality of the earlier Waltz. A Song Without Words follows that is intimate and eventually intense, reaching the highest register of the cello. Episodes ends with a dry, concise epilogue reprising some of the opening March both forwards and backwards.