Concerto for piano solo

Well… I have written a piano concerto and loosely orchestrated it, but this is the piano reduction. Recording from a recent event, yeah I know it’s a bit self-indulgent to programme it, but nobody else is going to play it!

Cutting a long story short, basically somewhere between da rock and Hollywood, a bit of Chopin for the sl*w movement and then Dies Irae / Totentanzish stuff, returning to the initial thematic material.

app.box.com/s/3z8pq5aa8q10p45vmdm1prkobfwhg1py

(c. 22 min)

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Umm, somewhat bump-y of moi, especially as it was part of my improvz album thread, but I’ve been posting this on every piano forum going recently so why not here :joy:

Ignore the above link, this is much better audio quality, and with sheet music. Live rec, though with minor fuckupz.

I suspect this is going to be a part of my work in the next year, both in that I want to programme it in recitals, plus I need to finish orchestration and perhaps even render even a synth version (let’s face it, I’m not going to get an orchestra without extreme luck); also a third party is trying to interest a publisher.

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Rezpec! I saw this on 88ztreet, enjoyed it a lot

I love how unabashed it is, doesn’t shy away from being a thoroughly red-blooded romantic piece, a lot of great ideas in it and I like how the piano writing is often Thalbergian - ie early 19th century , mixed with turn of the 20th century harmonies. Bortkiewicz seemed to shy away from writing as showy as this :grin:

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It’s borderline pastiche, in that there are a lot of places where I can say “this passage is influenced by piece x”, but it’s an attempt to write an ultra-romantic concerto on my terms, no compromises, and not listen to someone else’s :laughing: it’s probably fairly apparent, for example, that I’m rather fond of the Totentanz, whilst indeed I have used a bit of Thalbergian trickery in trying to maximise textures.

The solo piano part is pushing it a bit in places, as it’s a synthesis of both piano and orchestra, and I dropped a few bits during the performance. An orchestra would definitely add extra colour (plus give the soloist a bit of breathing space); for a not absolutely full size concert grand I thought the 88 did rather well.