Margarita Zelenaia
Duo for cello and piano
Year: 2000
Duration (in minutes): 18'39; 30
Difficulty: High (professional)
Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players, solo instrument with piano, solo string with piano
Instruments: any string, cello
Publisher: Self-Produced
Description: “Duo” for cello and piano was premiered by the New York Philharmonic cellist Evangeline Benedetti and myself at the piano, then was played by the cellist Christophor Miroshnikov. It has two movements and lasts 18’30. 'Lullaby' was written as a ballad consisting of two alternating, contrasting musical images.
A reworked Gregorian chant is the basis of 'Soliloquy'. The theme, based on the variation mode of development, undergoes a constant transformation: from a passionate monologue to a sharpening scherzo, from an original Perpetuum mobile to a polyphonic climax, where the theme is heard directly from the piano and in a retrograde inversion from the cello, etc.