Buffalo Chamber Players at the AKG: Purple Rain

Joan Tower’s Purple Rain (2020) for string quintet belongs to the composer’s series of “purple” works featuring the viola. Tower, who experiences synesthesia, explains that “purple is the color—in all its various hues—that most reminds me of the viola. In this quintet, ‘rain’ symbolizes many things: a steady repetition of light and heavy rhythms, flows of ‘held’ singing (particularly in the viola duets), and a kind of rapid ‘cascading/rolling’ in rivulets of sixteenth notes.”

Tower’s Purple Rain is paired with Johannes Brahms’s String Quintet No.2 in G Major, Op. 111, which uses the same instrumentation (two violins, two violas, and cello).

https://buffaloakg.org/events/buffalo-chamber-players-akg-purple-rain