Piano Quintet (2001)

Mr. Lieberson, who died in 2011, was inspired by the Cape Breton fiddling he heard in Nova Scotia, translated here into a dense, modernist language that in the last movement unfolds with contrapuntal intensity. A four-note motif is woven through the freewheeling opening movement, “Celebratory and Joyful.”

This dazzling, harmonically astringent two-movement score is at once densely packed yet utterly lucid. The opening movement, marked "Celebratory and Joyful," builds on a stern four-note theme and takes off in every imaginable direction and mood: ecstatic, fantastical, impish, dangerous. The second movement is a nonstop whirlwind with hints of Cape Breton fiddle music...and ingeniously entangled counterpoint. The fine players untangled all the knots of the counterpoint, though, in this bracing performance. This music is of our time, yet looks back to earlier progressives, Brahms notably among them.

The evening's winning performance was of Peter Lieberson's PIANO QUINTET. Writing in a style that might be dubbed "good-old-fashioned Modernist Romanticism," Lieberson has produced a piece of high rhythmic vitality and gorgeous sonorities, harmonies sometimes astringent and sometimes mellow, arching phrases that suggest an expressive, stand-and-deliver spirit. Part I, marked "Celebratory and joyful," allowed for plenty of tight interchange between the musicians with its play on a four-note motive, punctuated at first by booming low notes in the piano. After a dreamy beginning, Part II also launched into contrapuntal display...

Mr. Lieberson packs a lot of music and intensity into his compact, two-movement quintet. It begins with a stern theme played in unison before all the instruments take off in fantastical elaborations of that theme. The joyfulness is rather like Messiaen's, which can get so ecstatic and hyper that it scares you. The second movement begins with sustained, astringently beautiful harmonies before it breaks into a driving, contrapuntal exuberance that builds until a sudden stop. When the work concludes with a final, breathless flourish, you know that whatever happened, everyone enjoyed himself.