Music on the Point
Concerts with Personality
Corey Hamm Piano
Musical Journal I
Jan. 25th
To be honest, I did not really appreciate and understand the three music pieces played by Corey Hamm. The melody is very different from the Canon we heard in class, and I could not find some obvious strophic parts. The rhythms are unexpected with no clear developing route and logics.
“Piano Sonata No.8, Op.84” is composed by Sergei Prokofiev, with three movements. It was composed during the World War II. The first movement “Andante dolce” is in B Flat Major. Modulation and second theme is in G minor. The melody gradually became wide and crazy, with power and energy from the war. The second movement “Andante sognando” uses Andante, and the melody is delight. The composer seems to recall the peace and happy time before the world when people sing and dance together. It is in triple meter and the melody sounds like minuet for me. The third movement “Vivace”starts with several arpeggios. The first theme is B Flat Major, the second theme is A minor, followed by a brief B Flat Major, then switch to B Major, after which, C major and D Flat Major also occur. The final section ends at B Flat Major. The complex change in key zone makes the third movement dramatic: I can feel that the world changed a lot because of the war, and millions of life die away which was unpreventable. The struggle and cry presented in this piece left deep impressions to people.
I preferred the second piece Piano Sonata No.1 “Floating Shadows” composed by Gao Ping. Gao Ping is a Chinese composers and thus I am able to find some materials about him and his music piece. Gao Ping is born in a family full of music atmosphere. His father is a famous composer when his mother is a great singer, and his parents are music professors in China. The first movement of is light and floating. The music image is like two persons contradance: left and right hands play melodies in distinct key zone, and two rhythms are independent, like shadows floating around. The second movement is dark and sorrow. The third movement is fast and brilliant, like a dancing song. It imitates the beat of small gongs and uses a lot of portamento. Gao uses motivic fragmentation to break the large themes in the first and second movement into smaller themes, and used these pieces in the third movement. The emotion dramatically change in the whole piece, it indicates that a lots of things are like “floating light and passing shadow”, which people cannot capture.
Henri Dutilleux wrote “Sonata pour piano” after the World War II. It is composed of three movements: “Allegro con moto”, “Lied” and “Choral et variations”. The “Lied” is in A B A form. The tonic key is D Flat Major. It is a brilliant piece which gives me a sense of impressionism. It is similar to Debussy “Cloud” – in both pieces, music sounds like floating and drifting around with no clear direction.