Old impovs from the tapes

[furtwaengler]

Improvisation has always been my most natural reaction to the piano, and I have been improvising from the beginning.

I was indeed very excited to discover some old tapes in which there appear old treasures. The first is from as far back as 1998 or 1999, dated by the busy work of recording parts for the high school choir. Perhaps this accounts for the surprisingly good sound. I include a snippet which shows how I lost focus on the task and moved straight from recording parts to the spontaneous improvisation. I notice the different harmonic language I was using at that time over against the variety of dissonances characterizing my current output. This is a thrill for me.

This other tape appears to be from a little further in the future, probably 2001 due to certain quotations including fragments of a toccata I wrote in fall of 2000, as part of a not so successful piano sonata. I am pleased with how the material opens and flows in a stream-of-conscious dreamlike state for 47 minutes (cut short where the tape cuts off). I could almost call this Tedish! Only problem is the shape of the tape, which seems to start a semitone low and rise gradually as it plays (and with that, the tempo) to the point it's near a whole tone high at the end. What can you do?

[ted]

I like the opening section of the shorter one very much, with its Spanish tinge and recitative effect. I have not listened to all of the larger one yet but I shall do so soon. I think, at least as far as these recordings go, you are at your best when you are furthest from conventional vocabulary of playing forms. By this latter term I mean the virtuosic but notationally square-toed devices which saturate old fashioned romantic display pianism. It occurs to me that your playing takes on an altogether different quality when you get rid of the impulse to improvise physically. Of course this is just perhaps the opinion of an old man who had an overdose of virtuosity in his youth, and who even today I enjoys "unleashing da fury" on the odd occasion himself. Nonetheless, that is my reaction to these interesting old tapes.

[pankrpec]

I liked the second one very much, although I found it hard to listen to in the beginning because of the sound quality, but I completely forgot about it after a while and just listened to the music.