Russian Sketches is a 3.5-minute piece for string quartet plus contrabass, based on Russian folk themes.
For the Women’s Art Registry of MN-International and dedicated to ART-MISSIA in friendship, admiration, and celebration of the continuing strength of women artists.
Russian Sketches was written in response to a request from the Minnesota-based International Alliance of Women in the Arts for a piece to celebrate the opening of a show by their sister organization, Misia, in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Remembering the excellence of Russian string players, I wrote for string quartet plus contrabass. Having already done some research on Russian folk songs in preparation for my opera, Snow, I used several of my favorites as themes for the three short fantasies the comprise the Sketches.
Finding the melody in the first sketch, “Up the Hill I Climb,” will prove difficult; it doesn’t appear intact until the very end of the movement. In contrast, “Where Have You Been?” appears immediately after a short introduction to the second movement. “The Rustic Castle” is very brief and is heard first in the bass some sixty measures into the third movement.
Russian Sketches was premiered by
The String Orchestra of the Moscow Symphony
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, USSR
September 3, 1993
Genre
Instrumentation
Strings
Duration
c.3:30
Year Written
2013
