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Diapason Riff

placitastrails – October 8, 2019

By Eric Walters. Chamber work for cello & piano. Hear the composer’s performance on Youtube!

Of this work, the composer wrote in a program note from 2011:

Diapason Riff (2008)
A happy case of being able to present music
closest to its original source. Our pianist Frederick
Frahm moved to New Mexico from the Seattle-
Tacoma area a few years ago. He is a prolific and
much-published composer and an accomplished
organist. Fred and I have been able to perform
much of each other’s music, and the resultant
commiseration on our odd calling has been very
therapeutic. It is one of the strange things about
the overly specialized world we live in that such
interactions are rare. I wrote Diapason Riff for a
duo recital we gave of a couple of years back,
and it reminded Fred of John Dryden’s Song for
St. Cecilia’s Day:
Thro’ all the compass of notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.

I think that was a compliment…