The Dance of Untruth (piano and orchestra)

This is an older work of mine, which I've been busy cleaning up and modifying. It's actually one of my most dissonant works (which isn't really saying all that much).

The Dance of Untruth, opus 24, for piano and orchestra, is basically a symphonic poem with piano obligato. It loosely follows the action of a chapter from a Stephen King novel (The Tommyknockers), from which it gets its title.

Six continuous sections (the recording, in two parts, breaks between the 4th and 5th sections):

Molto rubato - Lento
Allegro feroce
Molto calmando
Scherzando
Cadenza
Allegro furioso

The thematic material is two-fold: a tone row that generates a lot of the shorter motivic material, and a longer "lyrical" theme that relies heavily on major 7ths.

With the piano solo, there are 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 1 oboe, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bassons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.

I've included both the full score and the piano reduction.
There are certainly some discrepancies between the two scores, however, the orchestral score is the definitive version.

The recordings are of sections 1-4, then 5 - 6.

part 1

Part 2

I hope I'll make it in time first!

This is FANTASTIC STUFF!

I will edit (or repost) when I've heard the whole thing, but wanted to make sure I'm the first to comment

Recording GPO? If so it sounds fantastic as well! HELL IT DOES!

This is SO totally my style! The more I listen to it, I'm stunned! WOW! It's bloody marvelous stuff! For me this is completely fresh (although it does remind me a tiny bit of Scriabine, but who cares (?)) and I find it much more energetic than your later works (not that this is a bad thing).

I keep with the edits, see?

I think that this is a masterpiece! A great work! I find that it is mature, and fresh as well! I listened to it and will listen to it more tonight. It is music that I LOVE listening! I hope you get a live recording, because it would simply be stunning!

and now that I'm jealous and done with my own orchestral with piano (what a coinsidence! Exactly the same forces 3ple woods, etc) I will make the rendering to post in the forum! (there we go... once more speaking about myself in someone elses thread! bad Nikolas! Bad! I'm just excited with this marvelous music I heard)

I liked it less than Nikolas did, but I still liked it.

I was mightily impressed when I first downloaded this.

The whole piece gives me the impression of a stream of consciousness, what with the wonderfully relentless creativity. Top quality piano writing combined with lush orchestration, mixed with rich harmony!

I had to refrain from commenting immediately because there's simply so much to take in. I was worried I'd miss some important bits. Now, several listens in, I'm beginning to build up a clearer picture, but it's still sounding fresh, which is great.

Nothing else to add except a question: may I ask when you wrote this work (the original)?

thank-you Niko, Sphere, and Mike.

Mike, I originally wrote it in 1999.

It's gone through some gradual modifications over the years, and a rather major overhaul (particularly the orchestration) in the last month.

There are still a few minor spots where I think I could adjust it (there's one little spot in the final section that's nagging at the back of my mind), but I'm actually very proud of this piece. It's quite different from my other music (as Niko remarked), but I think that it's still a good reflection of who I am musically. Particularly the constant search for "consonance" that threads its way in and out throughout the whole piece.

This is a great piece, Musically there's not much to complain about, personally I love when you start the M7 part of the piece where you start phasing, the way you work in and out of it is great. The motives you use throughout are for the most part easily recognizable, at least during the piece so its not like as a listener I'm fighting to hear some resemblance of cohesion. If I were you I'd be proud as well of this piece. the way you use the percussion is nice too, you dont' hear a lot of decent percussion writers on this or any forum. Great job.

Very nice, QC! I particularly liked your use of the split root chords (Bb D F B for example). I also enjoyed the flute solos in the first third of the piece. I'd enjoy seeing a full score to check out your orchestration.

Bravo!

full score is on its way...

I just HATE all the nitpicky detail work that comes with writing a piano and orchestra piece!

One word: Fantastic!

This is going on my ipod. If I can find space...

For anyone interested, I've now uploaded the full score of the concerto.

Some minor changes have also been brought to it, though they are probably not reflected in the recording yet (probably tomorrow when I get the chance to upload the new recordings).

Again, thank-you for all the very kind comments.

This is one of those strange situations where someone says "hey have you ever..." and it gets you thinking, and you pull out an old score you hadn't really thought about in a long time, then you get to work on it 12-14 hours a day.. and it ends up like this!