VIDEO: Prelude No. 5 ("Sorrowfully")

[lateromantic]

Sorrow, struggle, serenity.  Prelude No. 5 is the centerpiece of the Nine Preludes, spiritually as well as numerically.

I think this is one of my best recordings.  I have both a non-score and a score version for ir.  So take your pick, and let me know your suggestions or comments!  I'm constantly looking for improvements, whether in expressiveness, pianistic technique, or recording methodology.

Currently, the score for the whole nine-prelude set is available through AJ Long's website:  https://ajlongspiano.com/store

[siveron]

I love what you did with it, great stuff!

[lateromantic]

Thanks, Siveron!  Listening again now, I hear a lot of little imperfections in my technique that bother me, although I think I conveyed the spirit of the composition pretty well.

[lateromantic]

For the theoretically-minded:  One thing I neglected to mention is that although I've been offering the Nine Preludes here one by one, there is a definite structure to the whole set.  So far I've presented:


No. 1 in D-Sharp Minor
No. 2 in G Major
No. 3 in F-Sharp Minor
No. 4 in B-Flat Major
No. 5 in A Minor
...

From that information it should not be hard to infer the key of Prelude No. 6 (or at least, to narrow it down to one of two enharmonically equivalent keys), and also to plot out the key centers for the set as a whole.

In addition to the key structure, there are certain other symmetries within the set.

[ted]

This is a very beautiful piano piece. The underlying psychic message and the force of your musical personality are coming out loud and clear, don't worry about that. I honestly don't think structures, keys, technique and the rest matter that much in comparison. I like spontaneity and a bit of roughness and woolly thinking with this sort of music, and notation is an approximation of the sound, not vice-versa. If I were you, I would put all my energy into the core process, the actual implementing of the creative drive rather than polishing the end products of that process, if that doesn't sound too fatuous. You do have something vital to say in the idiom and you are saying it very well; just keep on doing so with increased frequency and intensity.

[lateromantic]

Thanks for your comments, Ted.  You're certainly right that the "psychic message" is much more important that key structures, and I'm glad to know that the former is coming across.  When I composed the set, the key structure was one of several devices I used to give unity to the set as a whole, but when I was working on the individual preludes, I wasn't thinking about that.

As for pianistic technique, I guess I'm a bit hyper-concerned about that right now because I'm getting ready to record one of the later preludes where any technical flaws (such as little unevennesses) will be more exposed than in this one.