From Indiana recital
June 25, 2008
Here are the improvisational portions of my recent recital in Greencastle, Indiana. Each audio file contains both my performance in the concert and my comments before each piece, including audience participation.
Schubert Impromptu with improvised varied reprises:
click here
Three Chopin Etudes, chosen by the audience, with improvised preluding:
click here
Sonata based on four notes given by the audience:
click here
334-336: Four Note Sonatas
June 2, 2008
This form needs a little explaining - it’s a solo version of a form I am warming up for an upcoming improvisation concert, in which the audience calls out four notes and I improvise a sonata using the four notes as a theme.
In this case, the first thing you will hear is me closing my eyes and letting my hand drop on four random places on the piano, generating four random notes. Then I play them in the middle of the piano, so you hear how they come together as a motive. Then, after thinking for about two seconds, I plunge in and improvise a sonata movement.
A couple of procedures have emerged from working with this form. One, the “closing theme” area of the exposition is usually some sort of expanded or altered recap of the opening motive and theme. Otherwise things seem to float away from the opening idea too quickly. The opening idea also tends to take part in the coda - I guess you could say this form is more cyclical than the classical sonata.
The other is that by the time the development rolls around, there’s a need to change things up and slow them down. So, the development is kind of sounding like a new, third theme, albeit it tends to modulate and shape-shift. That’s where the form’s at right now anyway. These are from the last two weeks.
