Autumn 2016 Update

It’s been a while since I’ve uploaded anything. The good news is I’m not dead, though it may have felt like it at times. I’ve been struck down by a mystery stomach complaint, which has been pretty debilitating for much of the last couple of years. However, I’m doing much better now and looking forward to getting this show back on the road.

Clearly at the moment I can’t provide value for a subscription service so I’m going to shut that down for the foreseeable future. If you’ve got a current subscription I’ll leave the login available for you until I’m able to restart selling subscriptions again.

Instead I intend to release some CDs. Starting sometime next year. If you have a current subscription I’ll send you the first one free as a thank you for your patience.

I have done some composition in this period and the next piece to be performed is not a piano work but a choral piece written specially for Remembrance Sunday. It will be premiered at the Episcopal church of St John the Baptist (Princes Street, Perth, not to be confused with the Kirk) on Sunday 13th November during the 10:30 Eucharist.

In the mean time here’s a link to my recording of Debussy’s “Claire de lune” which I don’t believe I’ve posted here yet:


Organ Sonata

A sonata for Organ in three movements (currently sheet music only).

Tracks of this work


Here is the sheet music for my organ sonata, composed for a recital I gave in November 2014. I hope to go back and record it, but that will happen in the summer (at the earliest) when the church is warmer and thus more conducive to practicing.

The stop list (at the back) are the stops I used, and along with the dynamic markings should give an indication of the colour intended, but as with all organ music the organist must feel free to use their own imagination for the registration.

Join today to hear the full audio for this work, and download audio files and full sheet music PDFs.


Snowdrops – Performance Notes

Commodo means "convenient", which means the piece should flow gently and unhurriedly and with the utmost delicacy throughout. The pedal markings are complete – be sure to make contrast between sections with and sections without the pedal. While it is better with contrast between sections with and without the soft pedal, if you're struggling to make it delicate enough it could be played with the soft pedal throughout.

This piece is quite straightforward, which makes it a good exercise for practicing expression, delicacy and pedalling. In my recording I have taken the più mosso section as fast as it can possibly be taken - it can be successfully played considerably slower! Just make sure that it is both faster and livelier than the commodo.


Performance Notes

Return to the download page:

The Thaw

Read more performance notes:

1. Prelude: Winter
2. The Thaw
3. Fleeting Clouds
4. Snowdrops
5. Festival


Fleeting Clouds – Performance Notes

I think this is probably the most demanding of the set, but you don't need to take it as fast as I have. It needs to be lively and energetic - fleeting - but it can be slower (though note it is 2/2 not 4/4). Unlike the first two pieces, this one generally needs to be in fairly strict time.

This needs much less pedal than the preceding two numbers. I found myself using the pedal in bars 9-11, 17-25, and 34-63 (and in the corresponding points in the repeat), but otherwise leaving it off and allowing the detail to come across more clearly.

Getting the arpeggio figure (e.g. bar 1 in the right hand, or bar 13 in the left) smooth requires practice and following a consistent fingering. Likewise in bar 75 I don't think there's any avoiding the awkwardness of putting the thumb on the E♭ in preparation for the octave leap - just practice and you'll find it's perfectly possible.


Performance Notes

Return to the download page:

The Thaw

Read more performance notes:

1. Prelude: Winter
2. The Thaw
3. Fleeting Clouds
4. Snowdrops
5. Festival


The Thaw – Performance Notes

The only difficult bit of this piece is the continual two-against-three rhythm. I once, many years ago, swore I'd never write this - but it really does work! If you can master that, not only will you be able to play this piece, but a whole world of beautiful music will open up to you.

Practice each hand separately (which of course you do anyway) – really get comfortable with each part. Then put it together really slowly. The second note in the right hand (which is playing two notes against three in the left) comes just after the second note in the left hand - you can draw a little line on the score to indicate where the notes go. Play it deliberately and exaggerate the rhythm. As you practice it bring the speed up gently and you'll be amazed at how it flows – keep listening to each part so that it doesn't merge into the rhythm of the other. (If necessary, never be afraid to take a passage apart again and get each hand correct.)

Don't take it too fast. It's probably easier to make it flow at a slightly faster speed, but making it expressive is more important. Some rubato can be used to bring out the expressiveness, but don't undermine the cross-rhythms. I found that to learn it I had to play it slowly at first to get the rhythm right, then a little too fast to make it flow, and then finally I slowed it down to make it expressive.

Generally speaking this should be played sensitively, with the pedal throughout. Though there are a few points (e.g. bar 56, and bars 66-67) where the pedal should be left off.


Performance Notes

Return to the download page:

The Thaw

Read more performance notes:

1. Prelude: Winter
2. The Thaw
3. Fleeting Clouds
4. Snowdrops
5. Festival


Prelude: Winter – Performance Notes

Slow, soft and mysterious, this piece can be played with some rubato. For instance, don't worry about leaving a gap in the middle of bar 3 where the left hand leaps down almost the whole length of the piano. Getting it gentle and deliberate is better than snatching at it to keep it in time. This is in fact the hardest bit in the whole piece: once you've got that mastered, you'll be able to manage the other leaps which are all much easier and constitute the only real technical challenge here.

While rubato is here good, watch that some of the interesting rhythms don't get obscured. For instance, in bar 4 the second right hand chord comes before the third beat, which means the climax, which coincides with the third beat, is carried by the left hand alone. Or in bar 28 (which doesn't need to be in strict time), watch that the delay between the first chord and the first top G♯ is markedly shorter than the gap between the second chord and second top G♯.

If you're really struggling to get it gentle enough, the entire piece could be played with the soft pedal.


Performance Notes

Return to the download page:

The Thaw

Read more performance notes:

1. Prelude: Winter
2. The Thaw
3. Fleeting Clouds
4. Snowdrops
5. Festival


Festival – Performance Notes

Festival is one of those fun pieces that is much easier to play than it sounds. Almost everything should just fit neatly under your fingers, though there are one or two tricky corners. Lively and brilliant, it doesn't need to be too fast, but it does need to be rhythmical and have a good bounce. Use the pedal more sparingly than in some of my works – I found that my use of the pedal was restricted to the climactic sections and the middle, more expressive, section.

The first bit of tricky technique is the left hand leaps (e.g. bars 11–13). This is a good technique to master: take a little pause, while practicing, to position the left hand correctly over the second chord before playing it and as you get more confident and practiced gradually eliminate the pause and bring it into time - when you've got that you'll be ready to put the hands together. If you find that too difficult, then this piece will work if you play the second chord at the pitch of the first one for example:
festival1
instead of
festival2

The other tricky bit is the glissando at the end, which is actually quite easy to execute once you know what you're doing. In this case you're doing a white-note glissando, using the right hand ascending the keyboard - you're going from the A below middle C to the top note on your piano.

I found playing the glissando worked with my 3rd and 4th fingers, but depending on the size and shape of your hand you might use fingers 2, 3 and 4. Keeping your hand upright and fingers straight, turn it 90 degrees from your normal position and play the first note with both your 3rd and 4th fingers – your fingernails should be facing up the keyboard. You then stroke your hand up the keyboard, leading with your fingernails. It's important that you keep your hand upright and not pressed too hard into the key bed, you need to catch the edge of each new key with the fingernail and not with the skin above the nail (which is quite painful).

(For reference, playing a descending right hand glissando is done with the thumb nail, and it is of course reversed in the left hand – fingernails to go down, and thumbnail to go up.)


Performance Notes

Return to the download page:

The Thaw

Read more performance notes:

1. Prelude: Winter
2. The Thaw
3. Fleeting Clouds
4. Snowdrops
5. Festival


The Thaw

Five short character pieces illustrating the end of winter and the beginnings of new life.

Tracks of this work


Here are videos of two of these pieces, The Thaw and Fleeting Clouds:


I started thinking about these shortly after Zoe was born and managed to get round to putting pen to paper at the turn of the year. My thoughts were of birth, new life and the coming of Spring. In writing these I also made a conscious effort to do something a little bit easier to play and more accessible to listen to. I hope you like the results!

The Prelude is an invocation of Winter: frozen, mysterious, quiet and unmoving. The writing here is more dissonant than in the rest of the set, which is a deliberate stylistic decision as the prelude is almost a piece apart. This was written first, and I pulled out two features from the Prelude to form the basis of the rest of the set. First a melodic figure:
Theme
and secondly a rhythmic idea:
rhythm

The Thaw is where the dissonance gives way to melody. This is perhaps the emotional heart of the cycle and therefore lends its name to the set as a whole.

Fleeting Clouds is an example of a slightly misleading title. The operative word here is "Fleeting". Imagine a warm spring day: free of care you lie on the grass in the sunshine staring up at the blue, watching as light fluffy clouds pass by.

Snowdrops is a very delicate piece. For the first time in the set we move into triple time, which means the rhythmic figure changes to
9-8rhythm
keeping the fundamental idea of the second note being slightly 'early'. It's also worth noting that this piece is entirely in the treble register of the piano -- the lowest note you hear is middle C.

Festival was written rather later than the others. I had always intended to write a lively piece to conclude the cycle, but finishing the Six Images meant writing it got delayed. The result of this is a piece that perhaps doesn't work quite as well as it might have done. It's bright, cheerful and quite a lot of fun to play.

There are a number of influences you can hear in these pieces. There is a deliberate use of some Rachmaninov-inspired harmony at one point, while some of the conception is influenced by Mendelssohn. However, I was rather surprised to discover that some passages turned out rather reminiscent of Shostakovich! That wasn't intentional, but not unwelcome. You won't miss those passages, but I wonder if you will pick up on the Rachmaninov (which was the most intentional allusion).


Performance Notes

These are rather easier pieces to perform than some of the previously published items. Prelude: Winter and Snowdrops in particular present little challenge, while The Thaw and Festival have only limited technical requirements. An intermediate pianist should have little fear of tackling these.

Click through to read about each piece:

1. Prelude: Winter
2. The Thaw
3. Fleeting Clouds
4. Snowdrops
5. Festival

Join today to hear the full audio for this work, and download audio files and full sheet music PDFs.


Organ Recital

On 15th November (that's next Saturday), you have a rare opportunity to hear me in recital on the organ. This is at St John the Baptist, Scottish Episcopal Church, Princes Street, Perth (Scotland), at 1pm. Admission is free, but we are accepting donations towards music at the church. Among other items I will be playing Widor's Toccata and giving the world première of my new Organ Sonata (which will doubtless appear here in due course).

Obviously I meant to post this much earlier, but I also meant to post it after putting up the latest set of piano recordings... As you can guess everything always takes longer than it I would like! The recordings are done, but not all edited yet so in the meantime here's a little something to whet your appetite:


Für Elise

I always intended to bring you some of the great classics of the piano repertoire as well as my own compositions, and here is the first. This is Beethoven's beautiful little bagatelle Für Elise.

It's easy with a piece as popular as this one to buy into the many myths that have grown up around it. In fact we know very little about it. The original manuscript has been lost, though we do have some sketches in Beethoven's hand. It is generally thought to have been written for Therese Malfatti, who was a pupil of Beethoven's, and given to her as a souvenir, and it certainly ended up in her estate. But the publisher of the first edition is quite adamant that it was not written for her (the argument that Elise is a misreading of Therese can be rejected as the publisher was very clear to distinguish between the two). We don't know who Elise was, nor what her relationship to Beethoven was, but given its simplicity it would seem likely that it was intended for her to play, and might give some indication of her skill level at the piano. Stylistically its very out of keeping with its 1810 composition date.

It's not something Beethoven considered good enough for publication, which shows how wrong composers can be about their own works (he didn't think much of the Moonlight Sonata either). It wasn't published until 1867, long after both he and Therese were dead (Beethoven 40 years, Therese 15). It is a private piece, of intimate character, perhaps a parting gift from teacher to pupil, and not intended to be something to set amongst the great concert works of Beethoven. There are sketches of his in which he attempts to revise it for a hypothetical set of bagatelles, but nothing came of them. This would have given it a completely different character - setting the left hand off the beat by a demi-semiquaver (32nd note) and allowing the left and right hands to interweave.

What did Elise, whoever she was, make of it? Did she treasure it as her private piece of the world's preeminent composer? Did she hate the piano and tuck it away,  a part of her history best forgotten? Did she even look at it? How did it end up with Therese? Is this the only record of this woman in history? We can speculate, but we can never know. Certainly if she knew what she had, if she understood the charm and elegance, the quiet longing, she kept it to herself.

Or perhaps she was just trying to spare parents of the world from hours of incessant practice! There is no doubt that Für Elise is very often badly played. I struggle to really enjoy even some professional renditions of it, and this recording has its own flaws (though hopefully you won't notice them!).

The first thing to say about performing it is that it should flow. That might seem obvious, but I've heard so many interpretations were the timing is grotesquely pulled around and each phrase becomes a world to itself divorced from all the others.

It's usually a good idea to trust Beethoven even though his markings are often incomplete (which is especially true in this case). There are two dynamic markings in the whole piece, one right at the start and one at the long arpeggio towards the end, both are pianissimo. Put that together with the tempo marking, Poco moto (little motion), and you get an idea of the character: fairly slow, very quiet, quite restrained, intimate. That feeling should colour your whole interpretation.

Follow Beethoven's pedal markings. They're incomplete but you can work out what he meant. Most bars have a pedal through the whole bar, some of them do not; some clashes are briefly held by the pedal, others are allowed to speak freely – that sounds random, but when you look at the score it's very logical. Crucially, the long arpeggios section followed by the chromatic sale is covered by one long unbroken pedal. Play it really softly (you can use the soft pedal) and try it as Beethoven wrote it: it's beautiful.



I hope you like my music.
I need your help to make more.

Join me today and with your support I can write and publish more inspiring music.

Ilmar


For full access to download all the music on this site you need to login or join Ilmar Music.