Professional performance of my piece "Elegy"

Hi all.

Here's a performance of my piece "Elegy" from a recent recital by professional pianist Neil Crossland.

Think he did a great job with it. The piece is more expressive than I've ever heard it before.

Have also included an updated score.

Hope you enjoy!

Alex

Very nice!  The pianist did a really great job bringing this to life!  I really love those sudden and unexpected modulations between E minor and G minor with that 9th added in there for a very affecting harmony!  The rubato is really nice and the pianist's interpretation brings this to another level.  BUT, I think you can still improve your engraving and show pedal marks.  Congratulations on getting your piece performed and thanks for sharing!

Many thanks for listening Peter.

I didn't want to be too prescriptive with the pedal marks, as it makes such a big difference to the character of the piece.

Wanted to leave some latitude for pianists to make their own interpretation. Sometimes they can surprise you!

I've been told I should probably add some time signature changes; but not really sure where to put them.

Great performance, and great composition! You both should be very proud of the effort here. 

I absolutely LOVE the A section. The rhythmic ambiguity was so cool, as bare bones 4/4 was nonessential to the interpretation and gave a delightful surprise to your phrasing. It was near impossible for me to tell what was coming, whether it a short flurry of notes or something airy and sustained. Awesome

Maybe it would have been cool to try out a different way of notating? I kept thinking of those meter-less Boulez pieces. Dunno, might be cleaner, might not. I haven't tried it myself yet. 

I really like the counterpart to the A section with the 3/2 part. The free rhythm vs. strict rhythmic pulse is a cool concept that I admit I hadn't thought of until I heard your piece. Definitely something I'm going to explore; I'm very happy I clicked on your music 😄

The staccato theme at bar 27 kind of threw me off, if I'm honest. I don't know, maybe it's subjective and just me, but when I pair peanut butter with jelly, I don't want to add ketchup. Just the feeling I got. It was fleeting so not that important. 

Congratulations on the live performance! I'm sure it was helpful to confer with the pianist for your own compositional studies. Well done, thanks for sharing 🙂

Hey Alex,

I have listened to the previous version before and loved it, but sorry for not playing it. At lesat I am relieved that you get a much better recording from a professional pianist.

The piece is beautiful. No matter what technique we have, only music with real emotions and things in it can touch people, and I am for certainly touched hearing this piece. The opening modal melody is very nice and very "you". The change to G minor and with that augmented F#-Bb-D chord is very beautiful. I actually love the staccato theme in b.27 as well since it's provide some sort of liveliness, both lively and living with us as the one passed away always live in our hearts. The ending is very beautiful as well, ending on a 2nd inversion chord is nice for me since it adds uncertainty to the ending.

Thx for sharing your music and the lovely recording! Congrats on that!

Henry

Really glad you liked it Vince! 🤪

The piece went through many different drafts.

The opening section originally appeared near the end; but I decided to ditch my opening motif, and replace it with a copy of the later passage.

The result was a great improvement over my earlier versions!

It's ended up as a mishmash of Bach, Chopin and Gershwin that seems to work surprisingly well. 

On 12/5/2023 at 3:09 AM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

The staccato theme at bar 27 kind of threw me off, if I'm honest.

Pretty sure this was from an unused melodic fragment I had lying around, that I decided to merge into this piece.

It would probably work just as well if played molto legato.

On 12/5/2023 at 4:39 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I have listened to the previous version before and loved it, but sorry for not playing it.

No worries Henry. You already do so much here!

I mainly sent it to you, as I thought you might enjoy playing it. Never expected you to make a recording for me.

Thanks as always for listening. You always notice things in my music that I hadn't spotted, like the modal melody.

I just thought I was making a Gershwin-like Blues melody. 
Not really sure where it came from!