Dimitri Rastoropov

Tag: piano

  • Interwar Classical Solo Piano

    So here’s a little playlist I started of the really good solo piano music that was written approximately in the period between the two great wars. Some will be a little later, some a little earlier but in general it’s going to have that characteristic sound to it that I love so much.

    It’s the freshness compared to a certain dullness and tiredness of late XIX and very early XX century music; it is also how inspired and full of life (albeit terrifying) this music is, compared to the music written after the war that is so wound up in not only analysing the music, but analysing and conceptualising the past and ‘what music can be written after so and so’.

    Interwar music is really unique in the history of music just because it is genuinely novel and composers really went on to explore their new options.

    Initially I wanted to do all music, but decided to limit to just piano, and the just to solo piano.

    Maybe later I’ll do one for chamber music, then orchestral.

    Hopefully not opera.

  • Sepia Hearts

    Sepia Hearts

    I haven’t written for piano for ages before this piece. Last time I’ve written a solo piano piece was way back in 2006(?), I think. Sepia Hearts was finished in 2019.

    Let’s get the name out of the way first – as with most of my titles it’s mostly word play, but there are also some allusions to hearts (and minds) that are always out of place, perhaps looking to the past or sideways. I also like the playing cards reference. Stravinsky’s Game of Cards anyone?

    I’ve largely avoided the piano, like many composers, because of the enormous amount of baggage that comes with the instrument. It is kind of hard to avoid sounding cliche and relying on overused phrases and harmonies if you write tonal music, and equally hard to avoid sounding cliche and relying on overused techniques if you write music that doesn’t have a conventional tonality.

    This is one of the my first piece that I’ve actually written as I would usually write one of my ‘contemporary classical’ pieces i.e. every note, rhythm, and dynamic actually written out as you would do when writing for music to be performed (as opposed to the electronic and more popular stuff that I’ve mostly been doing since 2013).

    This is also my first ‘contemporary classical’ tonal piece that I’ve written in more than a decade (back then I was still in school). I’m not sure this is return to tonality for me, but it’s an admission that there’s lots of things to be explored between the absolute and silly dichotomy of tonal/atonal, which still dominates contemporary music despite everyone making it seem as if that’s a long forgotten ‘debate’.

    This really isn’t a complicated piece, it’s mostly quite simple melodic writing, some of which I’m fond of (mainly the second melody, although oddly enough it was the first melody that the piece started with). I quite liked the also quite basic, but somewhat exciting polyphonic writing and adding more complicated rhythms and time signatures in the development section.