28 seasons
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Reuben Allred
Lewisville Lake International Chamber Series featuring emerging artists from around the world. Sponsored by the Lewisville Lake Symphony in cooperation with the University of North Texas
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
Trinity Presbyterian Church
(Map)
Concert is free - a donation to the Symphony is welcomed
Sara Doan interview with Ben Allred
Gaspard de la Nuit Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Three Poems for Piano after Aloysius Bertrand Ondine Le Gibet Scarbo
The Rite of Spring (1913) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Transcribed for Solo Piano by Reuben Allred, 2009 (Premiere performance of the transcription)
First Part: A Kiss of the Earth I. Introduction II. The Augurs of Spring, Dances of the Young Girls III. Ritual of Abduction IV. Spring Rounds V. Ritual of the Two Rival Tribes VI. Procession of the Oldest and Wisest One VII. The Kiss of the Earth, The Dancing Out of the Earth
Second Part: The Exalted Sacrifice VIII. Introduction IX. Mystic Circle of the Young Girls X. The Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One XI. Evocation of the Ancestors XII. Ritual Action of the Ancestors XIII. Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One.
The Rite of Spring Gaspard de la Nuit: Gaspard de la Nuit: Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand is a piece for solo piano by Maurice Ravel. It has three movements, each based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand. The work was premiered on January 9, 1909 in Paris by Ricardo Viñes.
The piece is famous for its incredible difficulty, partly due to the fact that Ravel intended the Scarbo movement to be more difficult than Balakirev's Islamey. Because of its technical difficulty and profound musical structure, it is popularly considered to be one of the most difficult solo piano pieces in the standard repertoire.
The manuscript currently resides in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin
Stravinsky Ravel
He was the principal pianist for the UT Austin New Music Ensemble directed by Dr. Dan Welcher from 2004-2007, and was chosen to participate in numerous master classes with teachers such as Leon Fleischer, John Perry, Paul Badura-Skoda, and Nelita True.
While at UT, Reuben worked closely with contemporary composers such as George Crumb, James MacMillan, Melinda Wagner, and Christopher Theofanidis to premier or perform new chamber works.
Currently a new doctoral student on scholarship at the University of North Texas, Reuben continues his passion for new music as a member of the Nova Ensemble. He has been awarded a Teaching Assistantship for Nova by the UNT composition department, where his responsibilities include coaching various chamber ensembles as well as performing.
Reuben has also been chosen by the faculty to be a member of the select Center for Chamber Music Studies, where he performs in a piano trio. In 2008, he was a winner in the UNT concerto competition which included a performance with the UNT symphony orchestra.
He is master of more than one instrument. His first public performances showed off his considerable skills with the electric guitar jamming with a rock and roll band. He also profitably supported himself for nearly a year as a professional poker player before eventually deciding that the inevitable losing days are physiologically hard to manage and music was the passion that outweighed all others.
Along with his love for chamber music, the music of our time, and the traditional repertoire, Reuben has a great passion for jazz improvisation, composition, and the art of piano transcription. Reuben Allred is a student of Dr. Pamela Mia Paul.
Dr. Paul says that Reuben’s poker face still needs work but anybody who decides to play cards with him does so at their own risk.
She adds "Ben is extraordinarily intelligent, verbal and creative. The centerpiece of his program is a daring and most unusual venture for a young person - his own solo transcription of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" , the infamous orchestral ballet score which caused a riot at its premiere in Paris in,1913. It will be a physical and emotional tour de force. Very few pianists have the creative urge - or the knowledge - to make such a transcription, let alone play it."
"He is vitally interested in composing, improvising, playing jazz (he wants to audition for the jazz program in the fall, not as a major, but for his required related field")
"He will also be playing Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" - another solo piano piece that leaves pianists quaking in their boots." by pianist Sara Doan September 20th, 2009
Sara Doan: When did you first hear The Rite of Spring? What impact did that have on you?
S: When did you first decide to write the transcription for piano? Have others been written? If so, why spend the time to write your own?
B: Several transcriptions exist, but as far as I know, only one of them is readily available in published format. Many videos of pianists own recordings can be found online, but these are their own unpublished arrangements.
There are two separate forces that compelled me to write and perform this transcription. The first has a lot to do with why I am a musician in the first place. As long as I can remember, whenever I liked a tune or a rhythm, I had an unbelievable urge to mimic it or recreate it. Long before I knew anything about the piano, I was plucking out the Pink Panther, Star Wars, Yellow Submarine, etc… on both the piano and guitar. I had an intense visceral reaction to music I liked, and being able to play it myself has always been a deep drive in my musical life.
So naturally, I became fascinated with transcriptions. My first experience with transcription was in playing some of Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ arrangements from his own ballets. These are exceptionally written while remaining faithful to the original score. Throughout my life I have been impressed with such works as Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven symphonies and Schubert songs, Ravel’s transcription of his own La Valse, and Stravinsky’s arrangement of Petroushka.
Regarding Petroushka, the nearly insurmountable pianistic difficulties involved in that score led me to at first consider simply rewriting it. But then I realized that the world was full of fantastic performances of that very score, and that there was another ballet that might better be served by my intentions. I began at first to look for existent transcriptions. What I found was a published version I did not care for, and fragments of versions which seemed more unplayable than Petroushka. Given that performances of the Rite of Spring for solo piano are remarkably rare, I decided that a version written to my own pianistic strengths would suit me best. That was the second force that compelled me to write this arrangement.
S: Can you explain your process in writing the transcription?
B: That’s difficult to summarize, but perhaps I might begin by surveying the types of transcriptions that have traditionally been written.
Simple orchestral reductions, widely hated by pianists for their awkwardness and their necessity for revision, serve merely a functional purpose and are usually arrangements of an orchestral part to a solo concerto for accompanimental purposes. This type of transcription throws practically ever orchestral note on the page and expects a fair amount of on the spot editing from the pianist themselves.
On the opposite end of the spectrum would be the ‘paraphrase.’ Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Godowsky, to name a few, were excellent at this style. In Liszt’s Don Juan Fantasy, tunes from Mozart’s opera between a source for theme and variations, pianist elaborations, and wild flights of fantasy that obscure the meaning of the original work. While I have great respect for these composers, the paraphrase is generally something that I am averse to on grounds of personal taste.
In some cases, such as in Busoni’s Chaconne in D minor by Bach, the composer elaborates both the notes and the expanse of the form, given that the resources of the modern piano are broader (though not necessarily more elegant) than a baroque violin. In other cases, the composer pares down a huge orchestral score and treats it as though it were an original piano composition, ignoring much of the orchestral grandeur and density.
The type of transcription that intrigues me would be something like Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s “Gretchen am spinnrade” or his transcription of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. In both of these cases, he does not shy away from the full orchestral sound, writes idiomatically for the instrument, and still manages to leave the exact spirit and structure of the original scores intact.
What is different is that the piano sonorities and the rhythmic freedoms that a solo performer has are able to illuminate the music in a new and wonderful way. Contrary to common opinion, a good transcription isn’t merely a representation of the original; it may become a new masterpiece in its own right, though it will surely be co-authored.
It was utterly important to me that the Rite of Spring remain intact. I kept every rhythm and meter change, and tried to remain faithful to the density of harmony and counterpoint. That being said, I only have 10 fingers, and Stravinsky was capable of stacking extraordinarily elaborate pitch constructs throughout his large orchestras. There were various creative interpretations I was obliged to come up with in several of the movements that, in effect, cut out half of the score. But those who know the work well will, I hope, recognize that the essence of the music has remained.
I will be very honest… I wrote this score first and foremost for my own hands. I am comfortable with dense textures, large leaps, and octave melodies. I cannot yet forget the orchestral sound, and it was very important to me to push the resources of the piano to their limit.
S: Coming from an orchestral score to a piano score, how do you decide what to keep or deem unnecessary?
B: Its funny you should ask that, because the process of editing, of removing notes, took far longer than the actual writing. The very first thing that must be done is a reduction. 30 staffs need to be reduced to 3 or 4 so that you can get a better idea of what you are looking at. This requires the transcriber to transpose half of the instruments to concert pitch, identity where notes are doubled, which themes need to be heard and which can be subsumed into the texture, and begin to consider how the notes might be executed using only two hands (with a 10th span for each).
Once the reduction is done, it is essential to sit down and the piano and let your hands tell you what they do and don’t want to do. It is also essential to use the ear, to listen for nuances of color and voicing. Sometimes two themes will be written a half step apart; this is perfectly effective between violas and clarinets because of their vastly different timbers, but this is impossible on the piano to express. If you need those two themes, you have to figure out a way to drop the lower voice and octave, or raise the top an octave, etc…
Much of the process is trial and error, a little bit of ingenuity, and those rare movements of pure inspiration. In some sense, I get to compose ‘vicariously’ through Stravinsky’s own score, and it is a real privilege!
In other cases, entire harmonies and themes just have to be left out. You yourself even helped me do a reduction of movement 6; do you remember that, Sara? Remember how I had to cut out half of ‘your’ wind and violin section, and cut out half of ‘my’ brass section? It is painful to leave these on the cutting room floor, but too much clutter in the part is destructive.
Even now I have been criticized for leaving in too many ideas and themes in certain passages, but I hope I will be forgiven for a little bit of self-indulgence in the original score. I am perfectly confident that when performed well, my editing will represent my intentions.
S: Did you take into consideration Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography, and if so, how did that influence your transcription?
B: Absolutely! Especially in the last movement, Sacrificial Dance, I always had in mind the torturous final dance of the ‘chosen’ victim, the violence it must have taken to dance oneself to death, and more importantly, the unbelievable athleticism and real self-damage experienced by a ballet dancer expressing this movement.
The movement is violent, and my score represents this! I left in all the filled octaves, wide spread voicings, kept triple octave themes while expressing percussion parts in the bass register, and generally made it as difficult as possible. I felt that something of the ‘struggle’ should be represented in the piano part. While in many other movements I tried to make the part as playable as possible (movements 3 and 7 for instance), ease of execution was not the primary goal in this movement or in others such as movements 2 or 10.
S: Has writing the transcription impacted your life? How so?
B What a wonderful question! There was a time that I would have said that this project was a heavy burden, given the hundreds and hundreds of hours I put into it, but now I would say that I could not be more thankful for the experience.
First, I came to discover that everyone who cared about me was incredibly supportive and excited for me. I could not have done this without Pamela Mia Paul and Sara Doan (you!) especially, and I had so many other friends and family encourage me and continue to push me even through the most difficult road blocks. It is a beautiful thing to know that your can be supported by those who believe in you just because you yourself love what you are doing.
Second, this project allows me to fulfill so much of my musical impulse. I always wanted to compose but never had enough time, I have a little bit of experience in jazz and other types of improvisation, I have already written a few transcriptions, I love taking music apart to see what makes it tick, and I enjoy being at the piano being creative most of all. The Rite of Spring was a perfect composite of all of these things… I was able to rewrite a masterpiece, edit it at will at the keyboard, creatively improvise during the process, understand its complexities, and soon, perform it in front of a wonderful audience! I couldn’t be happier.
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Ben
Allred: My first introduction to the Rite of Spring, like
many Americans, was Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia.’ But I was young, and the
only impression it left on me was a combination of the animated images
and a vague sense of disturbance. Eight years later when I was 16, I
was able to see it performed as an orchestral suite with the San
Francisco Symphony, at which point I fell deeply in love! I remembered
being in complete shock, amazed that music like this could even exist.
The other-worldly colors, driving rhythms, orchestral brilliance, and
sheer power were enough to set the wheels in motion that would
eventually culminate in my transcription.