Fall House Concert

Sunday night, we had our first house concert at our place here in Lakeland. There were thirty in attendance, mostly friends from church and a few neighbors. We called the event "Piano, People, and Pies." Ten folks brought pies, including my colleague and his wife, Dr. Hawkins and Lisa, who dropped off a fantastic sweet potato pie and pie pockets in the morning, even though they couldn't attend the actual concert.

The repertoire was
Malotte "Lord's Prayer" for horn and piano
Gottschalk "Caprice on Home, Sweet Home"
Hulin Thanksgiving Sonata for horn and piano
Ross "Variations on Auld Langsyne"



The Gottschalk is a lovely version with some Chopin nocturne quality and some three-hand effect. I cut out half of the repetitive section at the end.

The Thanksgiving Sonata is a "medley sonata" as Dr. Guthrie described it. I composed it for Kathy and me, and it features most of the well-known Thanksgiving tunes as its themes. There are three movements:
I. Plymouth - mostly dissonant depiction of the Pilgrims' struggles at sea and here on the American continent.
II. Spacious Skies - a majestic lullaby about the grandeur of the frontier.
III. Rondo - with ASH GROVE as the primary theme.
I like the piece a lot. If anyone ever really has a need or interest in such a work, let me know.

The Ross variations are from my ancestral anthology (click here for blog dedicated to that collection). Ross was a Scottish composer who wrote several concerti, but this is the only work of his that I've explored.

The pies were as follows:
Chocolate with cookie crust
Lemon Meringue
Butterscotch Meringue
Two Pecans
Peanut
Pumpkin
Sweet Potato
Lemon Chess
Cherry

In general, it seemed like a success. With that much pie, the deck was sort of stacked in our favor. Plus, we had an ace up our sleeve, Kathy's charming 97-year-old grandmother who sat in the back corner of the den and conversed with all of these new people.

I felt a little unhappy with my effort, and for a simple reason. Several reasons, actually. I need to get the piano voiced and regulated. Also, I needed a little more regular practice going into the event. But most of all, I was reminded that a bottom line for me ought to be simply to do a good job with the basics of musicianship: tempo, balance, phrasing . . . and having a plan about these things. Composers have a reasonable expectation of at least that much. Spontaneity can be good, but not as one's total interpretive strategy. A plan lets the performer know how to judge his or her efforts. And, playing works of less-than-genius quality might require more conscious planning to give the pieces their best chance.