Tonight’s group skipped out on the presidential debate tonight to come hear the piano. Oh brave audience, forsaking the national dialogue for a little music! Here’s a recording of the debate in case you missed it. (I listened to about half the debate later on, and was impressed with Kerry, who was very articulate and clear-headed.)

• Cantrell – Cradle Waltz
• Chopin – Nocturne Op 15 No 2
• Chopin – Nocturne Op 15 No 3
• Brahms – Ballade Op 10 No 4
• Cantrell – Entropic Waltz
• Brahms – Intermezzo Op 116 No 4
• Brahms – Intermezzo Op 117 No 2
• Chopin – Ballade No 3

I like this program — it’s pleasingly symmetric. I now have a dilemma: do I repeat it on Saturday, and give up my claim to never repeat the same program twice?

I’m just back today from a wonderful, wonderful trip to NYC and New Haven, CT, which was a reminder of just how wonderful family and friendship are. And although I’m really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed (I’ve been up since 5:20 AM Minnesota time), I did manage to edit and master tonight something I’d recorded beforehand for you.

Robert Schumann
Bunte Blätter No 6

Download (2:04 / 2.3 M)

As I mentioned last week, I’m working on a set of short pieces, and in that set, I’m thinking constantly of Schumann. He wrote many sets of short pieces like Bunte Blätter (the title simply means “colored leaves"), with sudden shifts in mood and odd contrasts between pieces that ought to make the whole set seem disconnected and nonsensical, but instead make perfect intuitive sense and create a pleasing unity of contradictions. To me, they’re more like late Beatles albums than typical mid-1800s suites. I’ve been reading through Schumann lately, searching for the secret of unity in contradiction, and this recording comes from that effort.

Today’s piece is just one from such a set, of course, so I guess it’s hard to judge that previous paragraph unless you already know Schumann. Well, perhaps I’ll record some more, and then you can all quibble with my Beatles comparison. (Or if you do already know all about Schumann, you can get your quibble on right now! That’s what the comments are for.)

Here, for the first time in this weblog, is a brand new composition — one of a set of dances I’m working on right now. This is probably the most innocent piece of music I’ve ever written (thus the title).

Paul Cantrell
Cradle Waltz

Download (1:06 / 1.3 M)

Here’s the score. It’s only two lines long on paper, but those two lines sure took a lot of careful thought!

The set as a whole is still very much in progress, but I’ve finished writing a few of the individual pieces, and they’ll show up here as I learn to play them. Not all of them are this innocent, or this orderly, and I look forward to (I hope) surprising you with the contrasts.

A mysterious improv: snaking, atmospheric, perpetually unresolved … sort of … lusky. What can I say? The word seems right.

Improvisation: Lusk

Download (2:15 / 2.6 M)

My family has always loved Wyoming names, particularly three neighboring towns we’d sometimes see driving between Colorado and Minnesota: Lusk, Lingle and Torrington. Such fine words! They’ve long been part of our family lexicon, and I’ve dedicated my first three improvs to them to help spread their phonetic goodness to a wider audience.

The first Bach of the weblog, one of his sinfonias (also known as three-part inventions). The three parts in this one are not obvious at first: the upper two voice are wonderfully intertwined, and do an intricate little tango together as third voice turns slowly through a cycle of Bach permutations underneath. I love the way it unfolds.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Sinfonia No 5

Download (3:57 / 4.6 M)

As I listen to myself play this one, it sounds like I’m still a bit tentative with a new piece — certainly there is room to be more expressive, and more fluid. I am pleased to have worked out the ornaments, though, which Bach only suggests and leaves largely at the performer’s liberty. (Those are are the little slides, twirls and general filigree in the upper voices.) I know now why these baroque performers made a custom of improvising ornaments: it’s fun!

I’ve re-encoded all the pieces in this blog using VBR, which I think has improved the sound quality notably. (Now why I didn’t do that in the first place?) For those of you not familiar with the term, variable bit rate encoding basically increases the sound quality at sensitive moments when your ears are likely to detect the difference.

The MP3s still don’t sound as good as the better-than-CD-quality originals — sorry, I just don’t have the bandwidth to post those! — but they now have more of the clarity and transparency of the originals, as if a thin veil was lifted from the sound.

If you’re hanging on to all these recordings, I recommend re-downloading the ones you already have, particularly Three Places, which is my personal favorite of the recordings I’ve posted so far.

Today’s improv is a quirky, silly little thing — a lopsided dance for good (if uneven) measure. I encourage you to invent some dance steps to go with it, and post any here that didn’t result in physical injury.

Improvisation: Torrington Lope

Download (1:05 / 1.3 M)

Something sweet today: a bit of magic from Brahms.

Johannes Brahms
Intermezzo Op 116 No 4

Download (4:39 / 5.4 M)

These late Brahms pieces — same with the first recording in this weblog — are amazing to me as a composer. They sound lush, but the writing is actually quite spare and elemental. The structures are at once formal and organic, like Bach preludes. And the incredible emotional intimacy, their sense of being so personal, is like no other music I know.

But enough of that — writing about music is…well…you know. (That should not stop you from posting a comment, though!) Enjoy listening.