“The chimaera has come to represent any mythical creature with parts taken from various animals, or to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling.”
(from Wikipedia’s entry on the Chimaera)
In trying to conceive of a work that would not only justify but also take full advantage of Piano Six’s unusual instrumentation, I found myself repeatedly visualizing the setup (two pianos sporting three pianists each) in my mind’s eye. The more I thought about it, the more it appeared to me as a kind of fantastical creature, comprised of independent moving parts, yet united in its ferocity. The Chimaera of Greek myth, which Homer describes as a “thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire,” struck me as an exciting metaphor for both this eclectic ensemble and what I wanted to accomplish musically with it.
This brief, virtuosic piece is cast in three interconnected sections, corresponding to the different parts of the beast, all governed by the same motoric pulse throughout. Part I: Lion depicts the lion’s hunt with rapid, scurrying figures and muscular ostinatos that recall Stravinsky and Bernstein. In Part II: Goat, one piano takes center stage with a serene chorale, while sixteenth-note figures continue in the other, enveloping the chorale in a web of filigree. Part III: Serpent is the wildest, featuring clashing chords that catapult from pianist to pianist, and culminating in a climax where the upper pianists are asked to dampen the piano’s strings with their hands as the others pound away in extreme registers, producing a percussive, ‘rattling’ effect.
