QCCowboy:
Im going to start my comment in character of an untrained listener, one that has just been introduced to a very dissonant work.
*gets into Character*
OH MY EFFING GOSH! THAT WAS EFFING TERRIFIC YOU EFFING SON OF A B! OH MY GOSH.
Ok now that is out (obviously, effing and B stand for tabboo terms, but I dont think swearing is healthy)
Now into a proper, trained musician train of thought:
I was absolutely impressed by this fantastic collaboration of harmony, rhythm, motifs and sound! What an incredible feat of music this is. Absolutely fantastic. Your pianistic writing absolutely astounded me; there weren't any passages in there that I saw that seemed impossible to play. Everything was so meticulously crafted; so much detail. I mean, 8 years of work and revision would obviously bring this, but that 8 years has CERTAINLY paid off.
GPO is what im guessing you used, and surprisingly it did a fantastic job of portraying your work, give or take volume control. You look like you have really mastered finale/sibelius/whatever you use as well, as the score is tidy, and playback is marvelous. I would love to see your creation progress...see how you do everything you do.
Now in regards to analysis, there were a few things I picked up. Obviously, this work is complete, and so whatever I am saying would be applied to a latter piece.
I read what you posted, saying it was a Symphonic Poem with Piano Obligato, so a lot of the notes I took down during listening to the piece are contradicted by this statement. However, I will say them anyway:
Piano Concerto: In piano concertos we hear, particuarly those of a traditional stance, we hear throughout the piece, piano solos in between. I didnt hear/see much of these. It was as if the orchestra was constantly moving, and the piano would come in and just...add to the already thick texture. The mixing of the recording obviously didnt really bring out the 'ff' over the orchestra's 'f', and a live recording would see acoustics and all that stuff, changed...but I thought that some of the impressive piano passages you wrote were covered completely in a thick cover of other instruments. The virtuoso on the stage would be destroying his/her hands tearing out these massive passages, only to have the orchestra drown them out.
I am contradicted by Rachmaninov's 2nd Concerto here, where near at the end of the first movement and the third movement, there are tremendous chords hammered out in triplets building to a massive climax, along with the orchestra shouting out the climax as well...yet the piano is playing a rhythm that makes it heard out over the orchestra.
I dont know, it is YOUR piece so you can do what you want with it. It is probably exactly what you wanted, I just feel that you would be wasting the pianist's energy putting 'Sorabji-like' passages underneath a thick layer of instruments.
Now, I did notice however that you 'took this into thought' at bars 169 - 201. The piano was playing running passages while the orchestra was mumbling a melody out beneath. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the piece, giving you Kudos for writing so well for the piano.
To sum up this paragraph, I would like to draw attention to the cadenza. Again, what a fantastic showmanship of years of work...it is a brilliant 47 bars of music...however, again, its saved for just the cadenza. There were so many moment in this cadenza I thought, 'oh that would have sounded nice earlier in thepiece' or 'why is that here, and not at the beginning?'. A fantastic cadenza, of passages that could have been spread out more. Thats all for that. I thought the entrance of the orchestra with the piano playing that tremdous scale down the keyboard at bar 325 reminded me SOO much of a Mahler symphony (particuarly the 1st one, movement 4 - DONT CONTRADICT ME 'MAHLER FOLLOWERS', this is my opinion). It's fantastic, and I know it is YOUR passage, but I just had a 'mahler' thought in that bar.
Im not a master of Orchestration, so I wont say anything about that, except at the end (bar 418 - 420)...BRILLIANT CLIMAX TO AN END OF A PIECE. I can imagine those old men in the audience yelling out 'Bravo!'...you know, the ones you hear in those live classical recordings...'bravo bravo'.
With that, I leave...100 Kudos for this fantastic work. I would upload it to my MP3 player, but then I will start composing in that style...and whats worse, my piece will sound like yours, which defeats the purpose of trying to establish my own musical ideas. Can't stain the imagination. I will definately be looking out for a live performance recording sometime though
of which, I will undoubtedly add to my "Great YC Compositions" folder on my computer.
Amazing.