Gryc: Moon Thoughts

[gvans]

Stephen Gryc (1949-present) composed Moon Thoughts at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire in 1988. Currently, the composer is professor emeritus at the Hartt School of Music, at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. The collection was inspired by a series of poems by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931), poems about the moon as viewed by different people and animals. Each of the five short pieces transports the listener to the cosmos via a different mode, using unique blends of dissonance and consonance, melody and harmony, gesture and counterpoint, music that at once seems both familiar and otherworldly.

This work is published by Vivace Press (https://www.vivacepress.com/ ) and readily available. If you're giving a solo piano concert, please consider playing some music by a living composer. Not to take anything away from the great deceased composers, but to keep classical music from entering the cloistered museum realm, it behooves us to perform and interpret works by colleagues still very much alive.

Comments welcome.

[gvans]

The final piece:

[rachfan]

Hi gvans,

I just listened to your full set.  This is the first I've ever heard of Lindsay, so appreciated your "liner notes" giving some background information about this music.  These pieces are excellent!  I liked how you played the different interpretations of the moon.  You bring in all the varying moods and contrasts. And even with the frequent dissonances, they intrigue rather than offend.  Your playing is wonderful -- you put the music across to the listener ever so well. 

David

[cbreemer]

I had not heard of Gryc either. What an excellent repertoire choice ! How did you come across it ?
Indeed, every pianist should pay attention to music of living composers. I think this is easier now than it was a few decades ago. There is a profusion of wonderful music that is both 'contemporary'
and melodious. These are intriguing pieces with just the right balance of atonality and harmony. They remind me of Takemitsu. I could not think of anything to improve in your performance.
Thanks for presenting these so well !
 

[gvans]

Thanks, rachfan and cbreemer, for your kind words. Although these pieces were written to fill a gap in the intermediate-level piano repertoire of modern classical music, I found them less than easy to execute--perhaps because of their strangeness, perhaps because of my own ineptitude--and spent many an hour working on them.

Although at first I was a bit unsure of their ultimate merit, the more I played the pieces, the more they grew on me. Now that I've got them wired, I find them great fun to play. At a recent concert in Atlanta, they were well received by a hundred-plus audience.

Bottom line: Stephen Gryc is a wonderful composer, well worth looking into.

Check out this compilation of his chamber music:

https://www.allmusic.com/album/dreams-and-nocturnes-chamber-music-of-stephen-gryc-mw0001836242

[cbreemer]

They sound not at all easy. If meant for young people, then surely only for the very talented and
musically mature ones. It's good stuff indeed, I will keep the name in mind.