Piano Quartet No. 2

Boyce’s Piano Quartet #2 begins with writhing glissandi in the strings, punctuated with piano calls. They increase in volume and insistence, toward a breaking point, only to recede slowly. The gambits are varied - a jangling piano overtakes the writhing strings, a passage of high violin grows increasingly aggressive and subsumed by bouncing, insistent eighth notes, the whole lot subjected to “heavy messing” (Boyce’s marking). The last farewell slowly unwinds over the last two minutes of the piece, leaving us in an alien, suspended world, full of memories.