Examination concert : Interpreting music by three different composers

Abstract: This text is a personal reflection on my examination concert that took place on 17th May 2014. Instead of just preparing and performing a concert and then moving on to new projects, the writing of this text offered me a chance and an obligation to thoroughly reflect upon my work. I will shortly motivate how I made my choice of repertoire and why I chose the particular pieces. I wanted to make up an interesting program of pieces of different character. I also wanted to find pieces that would challenge me in different ways. I will then write about each piece and discuss the problems and challenges I had to solve and find a solution to. I will have a slightly different approach when discussing the different pieces. Regarding Alkan, after a brief introduction to the composer and the piano symphony, I will mainly focus on how to deal with and tackle the complex and highly demanding piano writing. Concerning the piano pieces by Pörn I will write about the emergence of them and describe them briefly. As I have had the opportunity to consult the composer while preparing his music, our cooperation has not only enabled me to get a detailed insight to his music, but it has also resulted in the composer making changes and rewriting certain passages. I will present some of these modifications, which for the most part appeared in the etudes. When it comes to the trio by Brahms, I will give an overview of some of the challenges in the piece, concerning ensemble playing and technically demanding passages in the piano part. Thereafter I will analyse the concert, first by writing about the impressions I had during and immediately after the concert, then by writing about the observations I gathered from listening to the recording. I found out that, in order to find solutions for certain interpretational or technical challenges, one needs to go beyond the printed score to find meaning, in other words, what it is that the composer wants to say. Sometimes there can be a discrepancy between the composer’s musical message and his suggestion of its execution. In some cases the performer has to decide whether he wants to carry out the composer’s instructions to the letter, or rather to find an own way of delivering the musical message.