The word “étude” means study — a practice piece, designed to exercise a particular technique. Études for musicians are generally dry, repetitious pieces, not music to perform, but just exercises for practice. So Chopin’s choice of that title may seem a little understated, or even ironic: his études certainly do exercise one’s technique, but they are expressive, poetic, passionate, and anything but dry.

I think the title fits beautifully: shouldn’t learning always be this way?

Frédéric Chopin
Étude Op 25 No 1 (in A flat major)

Download (3:13 / 3.7 M)

An interesting aspect of the piece I work to bring out, one which you don’t always hear, is the inner voices. This comes straight from my teacher, Don Betts, who is very particular about that in this piece. He quotes Schumann remarking on how Chopin himself brought them out. (To have a recording of Chopin…!) That’s thirdhand information, of course, but Chopin certainly does notate them clearly.

What’s the “inner voice?” Well, the piece is made of sort of rapid, repeating cycle of notes, and a melody — a “voice” — emerges from the topmost notes. That’s the “upper voice.” But there are sections in the piece where other melodies emerge, not on the top, but in the middle, and those are the “inner voices.” Listen, for example, to 0:50–1:10, or 1:46–2:01. Does that make sense? Let me know if it’s confusing, and I’ll try to explain it better.

Don himself has a recording of this piece on this site, from his Chopin album, and our two versions make an interesting comparison, I think. Of course I love his handling of the inner voices. He’s more technically adept, especially at the end. And his sense of the shape of the phrases is quite different in some spots — not the way I’d play it, but the way he would! Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of learning and understanding a piece, I can’t stand to hear somebody else’s version. But right now, hearing Don’s version gives me tremendous pleasure, and makes me want to think through the piece all over again.

One of the marvelous things about composed music is just this: Don and I can both play this piece, and through that shared experience I can learn from the master even as I derive personal satisfaction from playing it my own way. A piece of music is not just its own world, but many worlds in many hands at many times, never perfected, always satisfying.

I’ve been meaning to record this one for a long time.

Johannes Brahms
Ballade Op 10 No 4

Download (11:47 / 13.6 M)

This is one of those mysterious and introspective pieces like Chopin’s nocturne 15.3 that has a strange logic all its own. It’s low and, even in the crescendos, somehow hushed throughout. There’s not a trace of virtuosic flashiness in it; it’s definitely not a piece that’s about the pianist. The way it unfolds is … well, a nice fellow from Paris named Frank who emailed me about piano recording, and who is also learning to play it, said it well: it’s almost as if the whole piece were a single long phrase. And it ends by dissolving and fading away — a sentence without a period.

I would expect a piece like this to be a late work, from a composer with much wisdom and little to prove to the rest of the world — think, for example, of Beethoven’s Opus 111 or Shostakovich’s late string quartets — but Brahms wrote this when he was 21, or maybe 20. To see inside that young man’s mind…! The mystery deepens!

In spite of the mystery, or really because of it, this is one of my favorite pieces. My interpretation is a little unorthodox, but then so it the music. I hope you enjoy it!

Improvisation: Uinta

Download (5:44 / 6.6 M)

Cold, thin air. Winter light. A solitary high place.

The experiment: Greg Schaffner posted an interesting comment in which he suggested using improvisations as segues between pieces. I thought that sounded fun, so at two concerts yesterday, I put improvs — completely spontaneous, no planning — between all the pieces within each set. And, to make it all as spontaneous as possible, I had the audience draw the names of pieces to determine the order.

The results: We had a good time. None of the improvs were really outstanding, but they worked well enough, and the audience got into the spirit of the thing. I don’t think I’ll repeat this experiment (I have fun planning the program order, and don’t want to give that up!), but I will work some improvs into future Zos.

I love the word “invention” — it may capture what’s going on in the pieces of music it names better than any title I know of. What’s this? It’s just an idea, a creative spark. Bach has fun, and he’s sharing.

Just an idea: one scale coming up, one going down, alternating steps. And from that idea, a little world unfolds.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Invention No 6

Download (3:28 / 4.1 M)

There’s been a general lack of comments in this blog lately — and I know it’s not because nobody’s listening, so I want to put out a special appeal to all of you out there to share your thoughts. Sure, part of the point of this blog is to get my music out there on its own in the big world, but I hope for communication in the other direction as well.

So, how do feel about the music you’ve heard here? Is it interesting? beautiful? puzzling? thought-provoking? disturbing? just plain weird? I guess I’m aiming for a little of all of those, so tell me what you think. Even if you just find it boring, which I’m definitely not aiming for, I’m still interested in hearing about it. In fact, you really don’t need to make a judgment at all; just share something that a piece touched off for you, an experience you had listening to it. How about the blog itself — its format, its content in general, the whole idea?

If you’ve been listening with interest, take a moment to find your favorite — or least favorite! — track, and click the “comments” link. Say what you think. Ask questions. Never be shy. Hearing your reactions encourages me to keep going with this project!

What are the cool kids going these days? Podcasting: it’s the new skateboarding! And what, you might ask, is this “podcasting?” I didn’t know myself until Dan Steeves clued me in.

Here’s the idea: You have a portable digital music player (e.g. an iPod). You find some blogs to your liking that include audio (e.g. this one!). Such a blog is called a “podcast” — and yes, people use this word with a straight face. Then you get a program (e.g. iPodder) that automatically downloads new entries from the audio blog to your music player.

At first I thought this was just a gratuitous overapplication of technology, one of those delightful but ridiculous “because we can” projects like The Public 8 Ball. But actually, it makes sense: every day on your commute or your run or wherever it is that you carry your iPod around, instead of getting the same songs over and over, you get a sort of personalized global community radio. Nice idea. Heck, if I had an iPod, I’d probably do it.

Obviously this idea fits In the Hands perfectly. And a few sites devoted to podcasting agree: the folks at Podcast Reviews and Podcast Bunker gave the blog nice little write-ups, and decent ratings to boot. Thanks fellows!

Oddly, this is the only blog / podcast I’ve found that’s publishing original music — all the other podcasts seem to be either talk or broadcasts of already-released music. Surely I’m not the only one? If you discover any others, let me know!

Here is the fourth movement of The Broken Mirror of Memory, with Diana Frazier on cello. The second movement, the one from Saturday’s post, comes straight out of the cello, and all the extraordinary sounds it can make. (It also serves as a break for the pianist, who has rather an exhausting job in the first movement.) This movement doesn’t have all those wild sounds; it is pure and unabashed melodic counterpoint, a melody that’s been there playing all along throughout the piece. But listen closely — that second movement sneaks in there at a certain point…. Or, if you prefer, don’t listen for anything in particular at all, and just enjoy.

Paul Cantrell
The Broken Mirror of Memory — 4th movement

Download (7:03 / 8.1 M)

This movement begins on page 16 of the score.