Piano Sonata in C minor, 1st movement

so umm... music is one of my ways of procrastinating, believe it or not

This sonata is written with my friends and my own struggles in mind. I won't go through the details of the piece as I believe analysis should be objective, but I would offer some of my experience and comments about this piece.
fingerings and metronome marks are for guidance only, even I myself am not able to don't follow everything on the score.

my recording of this movement takes 10 minutes but it's only 6+ minutes played by the computer, so seems like I took quite some time irl in playing the piece
I find it very hard to interpret this movement, there is a lot of silence and "nakedness" if you get what I'm saying... 
but I don't do music for a living, so I'm not going to suffer from practice-till-perfect

"ad lib" - add your own cadanza
bars 161-163 - feel free to turn the bass into an octave if you play the Bosendorder imperial lol

it seems like a problem for me is that my first movements are full of dissociated ideas (just like me as a person...)
The introduction part of the movement had been set in stone for a while, but the exposition and recap of the movement was rewritten for a 3rd time, I basically discarded the first two ideas... but managed to fit the entire development section from how I wrote it the first time, so in fact you could even say I wrote the development of the sonata before the exposition, and it really shows.

feel free to comment or critique, hopefully I'm receptive (you could tell I'm a rather stubborn person...)

EDIT: I found out the spoiler function, so I will provide some more aspects regarding the creation of this sonata. Be warned though, spoilers ahead, even when this is just a discussion of the first movement, it will touch on aspects in later movements, not just the first one. If you prefer to listen to the whole thing before reading, you might want to do so after I have posted all the movements.

1. overall structure of the movement. I won't state bar numbers because I think the double barlines do a great job already
 

2. harmonic motifs
 

Tell me more if I have missed other things in my own music (that is if you are prepared to be spoiled for this movement and the next ones..)

Link to second movement:

Hey @PCC,

On 6/10/2023 at 8:40 PM, PCC said:

(let's see if the uploads work)

Yeah it works!

On 6/10/2023 at 8:40 PM, PCC said:

feel free to comment or critique, hopefully I'm receptive (you could tell I'm a rather stubborn person...)

LoL haha! I think composers tend to be stubborn since if they aren't they won't compose at all.

First it's a live recording!!! I love that! Why don't you put that in your YT channel too! Your piano playing is excellent for me. I agree that the interpretation is difficult since there IS a nakedness in the music and you the pianist really have to play what you the composers has been thinking, but I love those kind of silence!

And the lovely watermarks haha lol!

The introduction kinds of set the serious mood of the piece with motives hidden in it. B.17-18 gives me a very Japanese anime feeling, and it's the cornerstone of the whole movement with that motive since I think everything comes from it. Great motivic coherence throughout the movement for me.

The theme in b.23 is the inversion of the aforementioned motive which great pianistic effect! I love your harmonic progression here very much since for me you are taking an indirect route here for the goal of half cadence, and this makes it special.

B.31 for me is the combination of the texture and mood of the introduction and the b.23 motive.

Is b.48 the second subject or not?

The climax in b.68 is fascinating but seems too short for me! Also the preparation I feel like it can be longer, but this is personal.

The modulation to E mixolydian in b.88 is crafty. I freakingly love that part in b.96 with your voice exchange, and that's for sure one of my favourite section of the movement! Its texture honestly reminds me the Rach Piano Concerto 2. But b.106-107 maybe only an 8va sign is needed instead of a 15va.

I love the texture and counterpoint in b.108-115, it's so flowing there; but again I find the passage too short. i think it will be better to write out the passages instead of "ad lib" in b.117 and 119, since your own passage is good and for me it's not a place for cadenza.

So b.120 is the recapitulation?

Again I love b.129-133 for its texture but again it's too short for me. It's quite Debussian there. B.146 is identical to b.68. I feel a little bit off in b.150-156, maybe the mood is too different and the volume does not match.

Wow b.164. It's the use of your motive and it gives me the feeling of the opening of Chopin Ballade no.1. However I don't like the Picardy 3rd ending since I think it does not match the overall mood of the movement. Or maybe I'm just too dark a person LoL.

Overall, very nice job playing your own works here! I see the 2nd movement is in Ab minor right? Can't wait to hear that!

Henry

Wow… thank you for your detailed comments! As someone without much academic musical knowledge (just know about playing and things I read from the internet), your views give me a lot of insights!

While I agree many parts can be expanded, I fear I would unnecessarily prolong some of them, so I err on the more compacted side nowadays.

The picardy 3rd ending idk, it’s probably a reference to the intro. But I wanted the base note to be G to ease into the second movement.

The 2nd movement is in fact the earliest movement to be conceptualised for this sonata, but I’ll talk about it when I get there.

Thank you again for the review as well as the badge 🙂