Recital!

So it’s set!  I am officially giving a recital in CO in October!  This is thanks to my awesome sister, who has graciously put in the time and effort to raise funds for the trip and recital related expenses!  I am so excited for it.  It will take place on October 22 at 7:30pm at Magnolia Music Studio in Fort Collins.  Also thanks to Cynthia Vaughan for the performance space!  The program is still subject to change (and it has changed once already!), but for right now it is as follows in no particular order…

Sutermeister – Capriccio

Bolcom – Little Suite of four dances

Finzi – Five bagatelles

Poulenc – Sonata for two clarinets

aaaaaand possibly an arrangement of Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute that I am currently working on.

Originally, I wanted to put Muczinski Time Pieces on the program….but after the date was set I kinda figured that it was a going to be hard to prepare it in a month (!!), even though I’ve played it before.  It’s a pretty challenging piece – I played it for my jury at ESM.  I might save it for a potential spring recital.  In its place I wanted to try to do the Brahms Eb sonata…but after going through 3 pianists I’ve decided that it’s not worth the effort.  I needed a pianist that had played it before (semi-recently) and that was also available.  Easier said than done!  I can possibly also save that one for a spring recital. 

And if you have read my past blog entries, you might be wondering why I didn’t include the Poulenc Sonata (for clarinet/piano).  I really wanted to play the Poulenc duo…and I couldn’t really justify putting two Poulenc pieces on the same program!!  It basically came down to which one I wanted to do more.

So now I had to figure out something easy enough to prepare in a month and that was easy on the pianist (or involved no pianist).  So on Friday I opened up my itunes and shuffled all of my recordings of clarinet music.  The first one to pop up was the Sutermeister (played by Robert Dilutis).  That’s it!  I’m going to play that.  I’ve never played it before, but I know it’s relatively easy because I taught it to one of my river campus students my last semester at ESM.  Plus, it doesn’t involve any piano, which is probably a good thing considering the whole time situation!  

Unfortunately, the piece is much shorter than the Brahms/Muczinski, so I explored other options to fill in the gaps.  I have always had a love for this flute piece by Debussy – but I was never good enough at flute to play it!  So I thought…what would happen if I arranged it for clarinet??  Turns out…it works pretty OK for the A clarinet.  So depending on how I feel about the arrangement I think I will try it out!  It’s my first arrangement (well besides arranging 16^th century polyphony into duets for my students – which they love by the way!) so I’m a little self conscious about right now!  I will post it once I’ve made some tweaks….

I’ve noticed that my program has an unintended theme – pieces that I could never get away with playing in school!  With the exception of the Poulenc, all of these pieces would be too easy to study for a degree recital or a jury (at least at a graduate level).  But it doesn’t mean that they are lacking musically – they are all very enjoyable for the audience!  Which I guess is what I’m going for...

Anyway I better stop blogging and get practicing!  T-minus 30 days…

And while we're on the subject of countdowns...243 days.....