Livestream program notes
By Scott
We will be playing this short program made up entirely of our own original arrangements twice this week, first at our home in a live-stream event on YouTube, and then Saturday June 4 for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Day of Music event (click on the “+ VSO School of Music” button after you arrive on the page)!
1. Variations on Autumn Leaves - I transformed the popular jazz song by Joseph Kosma into themes from various classical pieces: Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no. 1, Liszt Liebestraum no. 3, Strauss Blue Danube Waltz, Chopin Revolutionary Etude, Brahms Hungarian Dance no. 4, Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Var. 11 and 18. I have used this transformation in many of my arrangements and I have a lot of fun writing them! The idea was inspired by an assignment in one of my grad school classes, where the professor Emile Naoumoff asked all students to transform the Bach 1st Prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier into any piece of their choice. To select pieces that I wanted to transform, I looked for melodies that contained three pick-up notes, or sometimes took liberties (such as in the Liszt, where there was only 1 pick-up note, but the interval of a sixth between E and C matched Autumn Leaves, so I filled in the other two notes, and in the Rachmaninov where there were sometimes four pick-up notes). I transformed all the harmonies of the original pieces to match the Autumn Leaves chord progression, but kept the rhythms and structures from the originals. (See score photos below for comparisons between the originals and my arrangement! And please let me know if you’d like me to make comparisons for my other transformation arrangements!)
2. Solfeggietto by CPE Bach (brand new arrangement!) - I transcribed this popular student piece by keeping all the notes the same as the original, but adding embellishments on top of them, or changing their registers so that both of our parts could alternate playing the melody. It is a lot of fun to play and is much harder than the original! *This was a request from one of our supporters, my college Japanese literature and language professor Suzanne Gay. Thank you, Suzanne!
3. I Got Rhythm by Gershwin (brand new arrangement!) - this transcription is very faithful to Gershwin’s original solo piano version, with extra voices added here and there on top of the original textures. *This was a request from one of our supporters, my junior high school music teacher and school guidance counselor, Maureen Monson. Thank you, Maureen!
4. Romance from 2nd Suite for 2 pianos by Rachmaninoff (brand new arrangement for 1 piano, 4 hands!) - I tried to be as faithful as possible to Rachmaninoff’s original 2-piano writing, but I needed to sometimes move voices up or down an octave to avoid overlapping of our parts. It is more difficult to play in this arrangement because of the complexity of the writing, but it is more “romantic” this way!
5. Happy Birthday Grieg (transformed into themes from all 3 movements of the famous Piano Concerto!) - we recorded this arrangement for Grieg’s birthday last year on June 15. We wanted to perform it live for the first time, since his birthday is approaching soon! It uses the same transformation technique as my Autumn Leaves arrangement, and is also a lot of fun to play! I used themes from all three movements, and compressed the 30-minute work into 5 minutes.
Autumn Leaves theme (notice three pick-up notes)
