Invisible Cities

This work was composed in 2011 and first performed on 23 July 2012 at L'Eglise de Verbier in Verbier, Switzerland, by Lawrence Power (viola) and Julien Quentin (piano).

Commissioned by Verbier Festival for Lawrence Power and Julien Quentin.

Programme Notes

In his book Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino describes one city, Venice, in many ways. The reader believes that different cities are being depicted, yet the cities still resemble one another. “The imaginable cities are assembled with a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse.” This could be thought of as the essence of the musical work: one ‘city’ is described, with memories and glimpses of this original ‘place’ referred to as the piece progresses. Whilst one is led on a diverse journey, fragments of melody form a connecting thread through the score, linking movements together.

This title represents more than just the inspiration of its source, however. Separate ideas are often presented in each part. They exist alongside and are sometimes even influenced by one another, but they are – for the most part – invisible entities, inhabiting separate worlds. These are my imagined invisible cities.

The first movement has a frenetic energy about it. Vivid and rich, the “desired city of [Marco Polo’s] dreams, of fleeting desires”, a good place “finally reached from the wilds”. (This is Calvino’s Isidora). With a youthful vigour, motives spiral around central points (a feature that pervades the whole work). In the second movement, a subtle meditation softly conjures up mysterious and intimate memories, somewhat unselling and growing in tension: a memory of something beautiful but perhaps unresolved.

Movement three begins by illustrating the parts in their totally separate worlds: the viola, full-bodied and intense, while the piano is distant and detached from this reality. Dark, heavy chords resound bringing the piano closer to the world of the viola before it disappears off again. The raw energy and fire of the viola part eventually eats its ways into the piano however, before leaving the viola alone reminiscing, incredibly delicately.

With the constant thread of a repeated-note motive, the final movement is well anchored whilst flitting between two elements: aloof and distant, where the music is less in focus, and then its extreme opposite, a rich, edgy and robust place. The two voices can be heard feeding into one another now as the exchange of material between parts is at its height. The ‘cities’ have become more visible to one another through the course of the piece.

• Charlotte Bray

Performance Notes

All movements are attacca, and run without pause.

Duration: 17 minutes