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CONTACT
 
Email: info@robertrival.com
 
NEWSLETTER

An occasional newsletter announcing concerts, recordings, & projects.
 

CURRENT PROJECTS
 
Winter Songs, a song cycle for mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy & pianist Carson Becke
 
book on music, gesture & rhetoric
 
STREAMING
 
Listen to selected orchestral, chamber & choral works.
 
Robert Rival YouTube View some of these on YouTube.
 
Find a small selection on music streaming platforms.
 
CD RELEASES
 
Dialogues
 
Semitragic Waltz for 2 violins & viola. Fabiola Amorim, Frank Ho, Vladimir Rufino: "Dialogues" (2025). Purchase.

 
Global tapestry - Ananta duo
 
Sonata "Muskoka" for clarinet & piano (Lake movement). Ananta Duo: "Global Tapestry" (2018). Purchase.

 
Windermere String Quartet: Inner Landscapes
 
Traces of a Silent Landscape. Windermere String Quartet: "Inner Landscapes" (2016). Purchase.

 

 
Lullaby. Edmonton Symphony Orchestra: "A Concert for New York" (2013). 2014 Western Canadian Music Awards nominee for Classical Recording of the Year. Purchase.

 

String Quartet No. 2

Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, cello
Duration: 22' (10’, 6’, 6’)
Year Composed: 2025
  1. Allegro con brio
  2. Largo con calore
  3. Allegro vivace


Audio


Video


Program Note

My first string quartet, Traces of a Silent Landscape (2011), is a programmatic meditation on the tranquillity and solitude I experienced while snowshoeing in Algonquin Park in the dead of winter. Fourteen years later, my second quartet could not be more contrasting in approach and character. Whereas Traces consists of three slow movements enveloping a bustling scherzo, my second quartet bookends a single slow central movement with two fast, energetic ones. Absent is any trace of a program. The brisk first movement (Allegro con brio) introduces the work's buoyant, positive qualities: a curt, falling tune dances in a continual stream of bubbling activity; a secondary, expressive theme rises, lyrically. The contemplative inner movement (Largo con calore) offers welcome reprieve: a falling-fifth gesture, echoed in different tempos, suggests reeds swaying in a gentle breeze. The giddy finale (Allegro vivace) restores the first movement's energy, now with driving, angular, and syncopated jazz-inflected rhythms. A common thread among the movements is the interval of a fifth: subtly introduced in the first movement, it saturates the Largo then underpins the finale with power chords. The composition of this quartet gave me particular joy, a mood I hope is reflected in the music itself. —R.R.


Performances

  • Aug 1, 2025—Rosebud String Quartet
    Toronto Summer Music, Walter Hall, University of Toronto

Reviews


Score Perusal & Parts Rental

For score perusal and parts rental information, contact Robert Rival.