Two Sketches on the Smoky Mountains

Hey, everyone! This is a pair of pieces for piano inspired by my experiences with the mountains during different times of year, specifically the winter and the turning of winter to spring. They are not necessarily intended to be programmatic depictions of the seasons, but just an attempt to capture a little bit of my own emotional response to them.

The first movement is somewhat slow and in a ternary form. The A section is based on a fairly simple pentatonic theme in F. The B section is meant to be mostly polytonal, with both players alternating between two different Japanese pentatonic scales. The scales are comprised of these notes: F, A, B, C, E  &  F, G, Ab, C, Db

The second movement is in sonata form, and was posted on the old site, although it has been revised slightly since then. It begins in the key of Bb minor/Db major, and takes a fairly conventional trip through the circle of fifths before ending in G minor/Bb major.

These were originally intended to be part of a piano sonata, but because of my inability to create a suitable finale that worked with these two, I have decided to release them in this form.

Thanks for listening!

This is really pleasant music; you integrated that scale in really well. Your engraving is great too, which I have a soft spot for. MIDI sucks and I tried to hear how it would sound like with real pianos, but it was too prevalent. 
I would advise you against using the treble-bass-8 clef in Equinox; I tried that one and we had to stop in the middle rehearsal to explain what that meant. Maybe you have people that are better with it but an 8vb would work just fine in my opinion.
Also, the first note in Solstice threw me off a little bit... and I know it's in the scale but something about it felt off? I mean, it comes back in measure 3 and onward, but starting it that way was a little weird.

Anyway, really great work!

Thank you for the comments Monarcheon! I apologize for the poor quality of the MIDI. I try to refine it as much as I think is reasonable, but it always sounds off and there are playback problems I seem to miss until I put out the mp3.
Thanks for the advice on clefs. It hadn't occurred to me that a clef change would be any different from an 8vb marking, but from what you said it seems like it would make a difference. I'll remember that in the future. And the G# at the beginning of solstice is a little jarring. It is possible that it really doesn't belong there, as it's really just a leftover from a very early version of that movement which was mostly scrapped.

Great! Because you have used several "modern" resources that blend parfectly (scales, bitonality, etc.). In this background, I wouldn't care about the G# in the beginning; one interpretation: G# = Ab ===== F major/minor (chord).

Also interesting the 4 hand writing, I have no experience with it. I also like the contrast between the two movements, being the first more "vertical", and the second more "linear".

About the treble-bass-8 clef in Equinox, I think it is used more often for chorus writing...

Thank you Luis. Figuring out that the second movement was a contrast to the first in the way you mentioned, and in some other ways (dark/light sound, slow/fast tempo) was the key to getting them to work together as a bigger piece. 

And yeah, I've only ever seen the treble-bass-8 clef used for the tenor line in choral music. I should probably inferred that it's really uncommon in keyboard writing.