Piano Music

Pinkham / Pinkas / Hirsch

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Dan Pinkham Comments: In 1950 I composed Concertino in A for Piano and Small Orchestra, which the late Paul Doguereau premiered in May of that year in Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With the exception of a few trifles, for years I wrote nothing for piano except accompaniments for numerous songs and Holland Waltzes. Holland Waltzes was commissoned by the two-piano team of Conway and Ashbrenner for inclusion in the 1982 Holland (Michigan) March Festival. They premiered the work on March 12 at Hope College. Each of the three waltzes is in a radically different tempo and affect. The opening waltz is warm, sunny and tuneful. (Do we hear Brahms?) The second waltz, extremely slow and langorous, is veiled and smoky. The third, by contrast, is saucy, driven, and brilliantly virtuoistic. In 1995 I received a substantial commission from the Board of Trustees of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to honor Victor Rosenbaum on his tenth year as Director of the school. For this I produced Preludes for Piano which Sally Pinkas premiered on September 8 of that year. I subsequently composed six additional preludes and dedicated them to Sally. She performed the world premiere of the now dozen pieces on January 30, 1997 at the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. There is an enormous range of intensities and structures in this set. The Preludes range from extremely simple to the complexities of a granitic ricercare in the finale. Early in the spring of 1999, Sally and her husband Evan Hirsch talked about producing a CD of my piano works. As a result of our discussion, three large sets of pieces emerged over the subsequent months. Quarries, for piano four-hands, was the first and was premiered by Sally and Evan at the Abbazia di S. Lucia, Rocca di Cambio, Italy on August 11, 1999. The work is for technically gifted performers. The four sections are markd Prelude, Variations, Interlude, and Finale. The theme of the variations is based on a psalm setting, 'Hear O Shepherd of Israel' that I had earlier composed for tenor, double-bass and organ. The concluding movement is a brilliant fugue. On their return home, Sally and Evan found Weather Reports, a duet book for young pianists. They presented the world premiere of October 20, 1999 at the Longy School. The work comprises seven brief movements evoking various weather conditions. In January 2000, I composed Shards, six short pieces for piano solo. They are inscribed 'For Evan Hirsch.' The opening movement, 'Allegro,' is terse and in C minor. The piano writing suggests early Beethoven. The second meovement, a fugue, is marked 'Con moto.' It was only recently that I noticed the first four notes of the subject were the pitches B-flat, A, C, and B-natural, which is, of course, the celebrated B-A-C-H motive. The third movement is marked 'Sereno' and is quietly confident. The fourth, marked 'Presto' is a fleeting scherzo. The fifth is marked 'Allegretto.' It's harmonic language reflects my enthusiasm for the Nocturnes of Gabriel Fauré. The final movement, 'Romanza,' comprises several contrasting materials. It opens with a long-breathed melody harmonized with large chords. This material is then developed in contrapuntal style. The impressionistic section that follows has nebuolous and vague sonorities produced by the blurring of the pedal. Clarity returns, as does the choral writing with which the movement began. The work concludes powerfully. --Daniel Pinkham.