Brett Kroening
Transfiguration
(French horn, piano)
Commissioned by Sean Dacy in the fall of 2010, completed February 2011. The concept for the piece, specified by the commissioner, was a journey through a mix of emotions - initial optimism followed by internal struggle concluding with reflection and possibility. Transfiguration opens with long, soaring lines played by the horn over the piano's sustained chords and chord clusters. Not entirely "in a key" but centralized around F in this section, the horn presents many sustained pitches and contrasting, large intervallic leaps in various ranges. Moving to d minor, the piano echoes the horn's melodic lines and continues to gain momentum through both accelerating tempo and added dissonance. The middle "struggle" section is built with more dissonant intervals, (tritones, major sevenths, minor ninths) added acrobatic, somewhat disjunct, piano lines and melodic material from the opening, though manipulated by augmentation or diminution. This section also utilizes some of the horn's extended technique capabilities such as: stopped horn, flutter tongue and glissandi. The horn quickly moves back into the sustained, flowing lines as initially presented to conclude the work.
