Premiered by the Carpe Diem String Quartet along with the composer in 2017, Midkiff’s second quintet pulls from his impressions of folk and Roma styles, beginning with a chromatic melody delivered by the violins, descending over a drone in the viola and cello. This Roma 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 Roma 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 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.

It’s all bluegrass fiddling and Roma 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 Roma camp. After the slow movement’s theme peeks in, the viola begins a fugue based on the original motif before the fiddle tune charges back for a blazing coda.

program notes by David Royko