Time Pieces, Op. 43 – Robert Muczynski

Having the chance to take private lessons is really something one can’t pass up. As one would guess, I could use them in my quest to get back into school for music, and so it wouldn’t really surprise much anyone to discover I am taking them again. I am lucky to have a wonderful teacher that is in the area. Anyhow with this new direction, what I’m working on has changed a bit. So here I go, I’ll yammer a bit about one of the things I’m working on… I think I’ll try to slowly introduce each thing and maybe talk more about them as I progress.

Time Pieces, Op. 43 by Robert Muczynski for clarinet and piano is probably the piece that looks most challenging right now for me. The work was written for Mitchell Lurie (the owner of Mitchell Lurie reeds and mouthpieces as well as clarinet instructor at USC), who is a good friend of Muczynski. It was premiered at the Clarinet Congress of the International Clarinet Society in London in 1984, which is a huge convention for clarinetists (I believe it is now called ClarinetFest® instead of congress and the society changed it’s name to the International Clarinet Association).

In case you’re like me and didn’t know much about the composer: Robert Muczynski is an American composer and pianist. He received both a bachelors and Masters degree from DePaul University in piano performance (studying with Walter Knupfer and Alexander Tcherepnin). Pretty major performer really, he played at Carnegie Hall when he was 29, performing all his own compositions. His works have become increasingly popular in the U.S. and abroad (I know the Chicago Symphony has played some of his stuff). He’s also been an instructor at DePaul and other universities throughout the country.

So far I find the piece extremely difficult. I am practicing at less than half tempo and have only made it through part of the first movement. It is definitely a twentieth century piece and contains a lot of jazz elements. I find it to be very fun to play, so far my impression is to create a very clean open sound that is flowing and very forward driving. I have yet to get any recording of the piece, so I am basing most of this on how it sounds when I play it, and not how the big hotshots are doing it (oh and there are some major hotshots who have preformed this, including of course Mitchell Lurie).

~ by jake Gest on June 29, 2008.