Chowan Pianofest was this weekend and consisted of three concerts. The first was a lecture-recital about which I have commented at length on the Skinner Anthology Blog.
On Saturday night, we presented our first-ever Pianofest ensemble concert. Chowan piano majors joined our guest pianist, Ariel Dechosa, to perform duets I wrote specifically to show off some of the students' strengths and interests. I joined Ariel for Gottschalk's arrangement of the William Tell Overture, and my colleague Paula Pressnell and I played duets by Beethoven and Dvorak. Mrs. Pressnell also played Haydn's Sonata No. 52 in her characteristically well-planned, remarkably clear, and quick fashion.
Another interesting aspect of the program was the opening sequence of solo works. My student, Terrell Batten, performed the famous Bach Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, followed by Chopin's Prelude in C Minor. After those two works, another student, Josiah Antill, performed James M. Guthrie's Prelude in C Minor that explores aspects of the Bach and Chopin Preludes simultaneously.
I was very pleased with my students' work on this concert. Each one entered into the project earnestly and seriously. Mark Puckett showed fine technical and musical discipline in Grieg's Ase's Death and Debussy's Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum. Terrell conveyed a moving personal connection with the music he played, and Josiah played the last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata with good variety of sound while maintaining a steady sense of momentum.
On Sunday afternoon, Ariel Dechosa presented a concert including the third sonata of Brahms and the sixth of Prokofief. Ariel played the Brahms with beautiful focus and made a number of the transitions in the work sound profoundly right. His performance of the Prokofief was also eye-opening in terms of dexterity, energy, strength, and musicianship. I think there are several amazing facts regarding this work: it was concieved in the first place, concieved for piano, concieved for one person at a piano, and there are people who can play it well!
The juxtaposition of these three concerts that surveyed such a wide range of styles led to excellent discussion in Monday morning's theory class in which students had many thoughtful questions about aspects of piano playing from issues regarding memorization and fatigue to considering patterns like Alberti bass and extended techniques like playing the piano with one's fist or forearm.
One of the ongoing issues is the theme of battle in music. On Friday night, I played Kotzwara's once-popular Battle of Prague. While this piece, written in the late 1700s, seems to have very little in common with the musical vocabulary of Prokofief's Sixth, Ariel noticed many similarities in terms of the representative aspects of both works and the ways one has to maneuver about the keyboard. Dr. Guthrie and I have continued to wonder about the battle genre and about its progress since the Civil War. I've started to entertain the idea of writing a battle piece, but would rather not glorify battle in my work. Battle has become so devastating and impersonal that a work like Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima might better reflect battle in our age than a more traditional battle narrative.
For archival purposes, a number of Chowan students also did a great job with recording this weekend's concerts, under the supervision of Dr. Guthrie. I'm sure all the pianist participants really appreciate that work.
