Tag: piano

night flocks of angels trumpet

Ashley Kunz Sorensen, violin

Rebecca Combs, piano

 

Program

Kreisler — Schön Rosmarin
Mozart — Sonata in E-flat major for Piano and Violin, K. 302
Sowa — night flocks of angels trumpet
Kreisler — Sicilienne and Rigaudon
Beethoven — Violin Sonata no. 5, “Spring”
Brahms — Sonatensatz (Scherzo)

Open post

My Favorite Piano Concerti

. . . prompted by discovering I had a recording of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, op. 54, on my computer. So, in chronological order:

1. Robert Schumann — Piano Concerto, op. 54 (1845)

I love the first movement of this concerto. Growing up, the public library a series of videos about the orchestra featuring the Schleswig-Holsetein Festival Orchestra and Sir Georg Solti with Dudley Moore as narrator. Turns out Dudley Moore is also a fine amateur pianist. He played the solo part of this concerto in those videos, which is where I first really got to know it.

As it turns out, most of the rest of my favorites were written in a roughly 10-year span:

2. Erich Korngold — Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1923)

I don’t know how I found this piece first, but I love so much about it: the harmony, the viscerality of it, the way the vigorous sections are contrasted with ethereal ones, and how it all flows together in one continuous movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irpieq0G0eI

3. George Gershwin — Piano Concerto in F (1925)

How can anyone not like Gershwin? Enough said.

4 and 5. Maurice Ravel — Piano Concerto in G (1931) and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1930)

Ravel’s two concerti are the holy grail of concerto writing for me. They’re very contrasting works. The Left-Hand Concerto is dark and profound whereas the Concerto in G is light and winsome. The Concerto in G also contains 9 of some of the most beautiful minutes of music ever in the Adagio Assai.

6. Sergei Rachmaninov — Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934)

I heard lots of Rachmaninov ever since I was a kid, but out of all of the concerti, this one is my favorite (followed by 3 and 4 in that order). I love the variety of moods and colors. As with the Ravel and Korngold concertos for the left hand, Rachmaninov does a great job pulling along the narrative without a movement break. [Note—For the video below, I found a really good remastering of Rachmaninov himself at the piano.]

And, finally,

7. Dmitri Shostakovich — Piano Concerto no. 2 (1957)

In some ways, I hear this concerto as companion piece to the Ravel Concerto in G. They have a similar arch to them except that the Shostakovich is darker and more visceral. [In the same spirit as the Rachmaninov above, I’ve included the composer’s own rendition below, though you’ll have to follow the links in the comments to movements 2 and 3 for this one.]

So, yeah, “no Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, or Brahms”? Nope. And no apologies — but you can write your own list, if you like . . .

Book of Imaginary Beings

I received word just yesterday that my proposal to write a piece for Eric Hansen, Skyler Murray, and Scott Holden—all fabulous musicians—was accepted by the Barlow Endowment, who awarded me a grant to write a 15–20 minute piece for bass, saxophone, and piano. Seeing how the endowment has given grants to a couple dozen Pulitzer Prize winning composers, in addition to commissioning a Pulitzer Prize winning piece, this commission is kind of a big deal. It’s also my first. So between all these things, I’m pretty excited.

“So what,” you may ask, “are you thinking of doing in this new piece?”

Good question. Though I don’t yet have any specific musical ideas, I have already identified what expressive resources the instruments offer. (This is how I start every piece I write, by exploring what the instruments can do.) Though I’ve written before for sax and piano, I haven’t written anything for solo bass. In studying what it can do, I was surprised to discover that, as a solo instrument, it has a strong, articulate tenor range. If that sounds surprising, go listen to the Bach Cello Suites transcribed for solo bass, in which the instrument sounds like big, resonant cello. I’m eager to explore the possibilities here.

In addition to determining my expressive resources, I’ve also begun to get a sense for the piece’s shape and feel. It’ll be in five to seven short movements, each with a different character, though all meditating on change, loss, surprise, and imagination. And unlike my orchestra piece, this time I already have a title in mind: “Book of Imaginary Beings,” after the book by Borges (with which, apart from having the same title, it will have no relation).

So now, with a commission behind these preliminaries, I’m excited to get started!

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