DAVID ALPHER (*1947)
was founder and for ten years vice-director of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in Massachusetts. Both as a pianist and a composer, he earns reputation in several concert series, such as Lincoln Center and in Tanglewood. Since 2005, Alpher is art director of the new chamber music festival „Chamber Art Festival“ in Marbletown/New York. On the opening, he invited the Meininger-Trio.
His compositions are unique, eclectic mixtures of influences including jazz, American folksongs, theater music, and the classical tradition. His melodical style can be found in the tradition of Leonard Bernstein.
He himself explains his music as having always concerned itself with emotions that never go out of style: love, sadness, pain, longing, fear, transcendence. Listeners respond to emotions because they themselves have them. He only uses dissonance as a spice or a foil, never as a default mode. So he composes music that even untrained listeners will find comprehensible, without sacrificing depth or originality.
„I compose for people, heart to heart."
Most of his compositions are written for chamber music formations, because Alpher likes the intimacy of these small groups. There, he prefers extraordinary combinations of instruments (in the „Walross” speaker, flute, viola and piano) or art forms („Las Meninas“)
For Christiane Meininger and Rainer Gepp he wrote the piece „Ritornello“ in 2002. >> Projektearchiv
"The piece is well written for the flute and capitalizes on the instrument's expressive and mysterious qualities." The Daily Gazette [Albany, N.Y.], May 27, 2005