Previous Performances:

January 6, 2019:
Quintet No. 2 for Mandolin
and Strings “Gypsy”
with the Carpe Diem String Quartet
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall,
New York

Like a whirling dervish,
we’re soon off in a
fiery tour de force…Premiered by the Carpe Diem String Quartet along with the composer in 2017, Midkiff’s second quintet pulls from his impressions of folk and gypsy styles, beginning with a chromatic “gypsy” melody delivered by the violins, descending over a drone in the viola and cello.  This gypsy motif unifies the entire work, its designation of “Lentamente quasi cadenza” (slow, like a cadenza) marking the improvisational character of the piece. Like a whirling dervish, we’re soon off in a fiery tour de force before settling into a slower section with folk flavors employing viola and violin solos for the theme to make its poignant point. Returning to the gypsy world, a blazing all-in concludes the movement.

Marked “Lonely,” repeated pairs of notes in the mandolin create a feeling of time passing in the slow second movement. The cellist’s melancholic theme is soon picked up by the first violinist, who spins it into a wild gypsy fiddler’s improvisation, eventually leading us to a mandolin and pizzicato string scherzo (literally, a “joke”). From the violins, we hear the main theme again, now opened up into C major, and a transitional melody dovetailing without pause into the finale.

…bluegrass fiddling and gypsy festivities…It’s all bluegrass fiddling and gypsy festivities in the third movement, opening with heart-pounding rapid syncopation and a swift, syncopated introduction that quickly morphs into a bluegrass-inspired fiddle tune, before tossing the ball back into the gypsy camp. After the slow movement’s theme peeks in, the viola begins a fugue based on the original gypsy motif before the fiddle tune charges back for a blazing coda.

—David Royko

…sparkling with imagination from beginning to end…Jeff Midkiff's new "Gypsy" Quintet for strings and mandolin is a work of the highest musical integrity and craftsmanship, sparkling with imagination from beginning to end. The satisfyingly proportional structure--both of the entire work and the three movements individually--dispenses his ideas and their development with equal measures of inevitability and surprise. It is clearly an important piece of music, standing comfortably and without apology midstream in the best tradition of American chamber music.