A “curious [and] exuberant human”: The music of Miles Walter

Composer and pianist Miles Walter constructs musical architecture through sophisticated grammatical frameworks and thoughtful sound excavations. While he acknowledges music’s often oblique impact on world events, Walter perceptively observes that “it might make someone’s life worth living, however.” Commissioned by Classeek, the premiere of his Piano Quartet, Part I opens our programme. Walter invites us on an inquisitive journey that both assimilates and creates new possibilities.

The path then leads into the warmth and nostalgia of Stevie Wonder’s Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call). Originally composed for harmonica, this whimsically romantic melody is crooned on the piano, as Walter recreates the strangely mysterious yet cosy, golden hour of sunset.

Journeys can also be boundary-crossing, even transcendental — terms South Korean composer Unsuk Chin uses to define all her important études. Her Étude No. 5 “Toccata” is certainly that, pushing the pianist past their limits in a striking, virtuosic attack.

The Coda from Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring follows, offering a harmonically rich balm to the percussive precision of Chin’s Toccata. The solo piano conveys the same staunch yet serene assurance of the original orchestration, closing with a resilient melodic line.

Composing in long, horizontal lines on large landscape pads, Walter stretches swathes of time into meticulous units of formal process and unbound, fantastical thought in his Variations on a Theme by Flying Lotus (2021). Described by the Aspen Times as featuring “churning, Romantic-era-infused harmonies”, Walter’s tonal landscape will then transform into true Romantic-era harmony with Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 47, IV. Finale.

Written in 1842, Schumann’s addition of viola to the more typical piano trio adds richness and density. The last movement ends with vivacious contrapuntal energy, propelling us into the final work of this programme, Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet in C-minor, Op. 60, III. Andante.

“Imagine a man who is just going to shoot himself, for there is nothing else to do.” With these haunting words, Brahms introduced this work to his first biographer, Hermann Dieters. Caught in a wrenching love triangle between Clara Schumann, his romantic love, and Robert Schumann, her husband and object of Brahms’ admiration, this piano quartet lay unfinished in a drawer for almost 20 years. The deeply felt slow movement, Andante, begins with a cello theme in E major. It is not joyful, but a resigned, bleak weep. When the theme later emerges in the piano, it is accompanied by a pizzicato figure in the viola and cello — perhaps the sound of soft tears.

Programme notes by Malika Jumbe.