6/29 – Kevin Puts: Quintet for Piano and Strings (“The Red Snapper”)

Born in St. Louis, trained at Yale University and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., American composer Kevin Puts has written music for the New York Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchester of Zurich in Switzerland, the Boston Pops, and the symphony orchestras of Detroit, St Louis, and Colorado. As a composer of chamber music he has produced works for the Miro Quartet, the Eroica Trio, Chicago’s eighth blackbird, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Yo-Yo Ma premiered Mr. Puts’ cello concerto “Vision” in 2005. The composer’s parallel career is in teaching; he’s been on the faculty of Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory of Music since 2006.

One of the most famous pieces ever written for the combination of piano and four string players is Schubert’s “Trout Quintet,” which the composer based partly on one of his own songs. Kevin Puts’ “Red Snapper Quintet” is scored for the same combination of instruments–piano, violin, viola, cello, and double-bass. Here are some of the composer’s thoughts on the work and its background

“[This] Quintet was commissioned by Robert Freeman and members of his family in loving memory of his father, Henry Freeman, the first bassist to graduate from the Eastman School of Music. He was later invited by [conductor] Serge Koussevitzky to join the Boston Symphony, where he served from 1945 to 1967.

“Composed between October 2004 and April 2005, it was intended to serve as a companion piece to Schubert’s Trout Quintet. In order to further develop this connection, Mr. Freeman commissioned poet Jack Brannon to compose a poem entitled Red Snapper—the first stanza of which I was asked to set to music. I would then use this [song] as the theme for a set of variations somewhere in the quintet [paralleling the variations that form one movement of Schubert’s piece]. This variation set became the third movement of my piece, and the intervals and general qualities of its theme are foreshadowed by a series of slowly-descending melodies in the first movement. The second movement is a short but very virtuosic Scherzo played Prestissimo [very fast], and some of the music here found its way into the final variation in the third movement. A very high, fragile series of bell tones opens the first movement, and sets the mood for the entire piece. This material returns as a moment of reflection near the end of the piece, and it came to me immediately after reading Mr. Brannon’s poem for the first time.”

“Red Snapper”

It hangs above the pier’s rank bustle,
shimmering vermilion orb,
trophy stunning as a second sun,
gilt on the luster of day’s last light.
A prize-star fixed by unseen wire,
the fish outshines its sun-scorched anglers
proudly caught in gleeful portraits,
lit by dazzle from their catch’s red glare.
Lordly luminary: bright-prismed oval
rivets our gaze on its heavenly form –
sublime crown of crimson armor,
declined below fins to silver eclipse.
No prisoner of the sky’s pale void,
this god springs like mighty Poseidon,
violet sovereign over blue-deep realms,
it rules iridescent, vanishing free.

– Jack Brannon

Program notes by Andrea Lamoreaux