List of Works || Interplay: 12 dialogues

Weinzweig composed Interplay during a productive decade. Many of the works in this period demonstrate Weinzweig’s continued interest in dialogic textures, such as Duologue for Two Pianos (1990) and Parodies and Travesties: 8 Dialogues (1995). Weinzweig describes the inspiration for Interplay: “Those intimate voices, the woodwinds, dominated my solo repertoire ... Then I heard a high-pitched voice at my door. It was a piccolo begging to join my woodwind family; so unvocal, ranging from piercing to shrill, it seemed at odds with the intimate voices ... Finally, during the summer of ’98, I sensed a solution: three disparate voices, combining the agility of the Piccolo, the articulate power of the Tuba and the Piano’s orchestral spectrum in a series of dialogues.”

The work opens with piccolo and tuba playing a buoyant motive in parallel thirds, which anticipates the piccolo’s frequent oscillations of major and minor thirds throughout the work. The piano responds shortly thereafter, initiating a civil three-way dialogue. The work is divided into twelve “events,” a structural approach Weinzweig first embraced in the 1960s and 70s. The events are relatively short, ranging from forty-five seconds to two minutes and forty-five seconds. As the event titles suggest, the dialogues range from collegial to belligerent and argumentative. In the final event, the three instruments break away from the call-and-response texture for “Forward March”; the piccolo and piano play a lively, chromatic melody over the tuba’s oom-pah march bass line.

Written by Alexa Woloshyn