Piano four hands
Katy Lo Wing
Issei Sakano
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Petite Suite
is a suite for piano four hands by Claude Debussy. It has been transcribed
many times, most notably in an orchestral version by Debussy's colleague Henri Büsser.
1. En bateau (Sailing): Andantino
2. Cortège (Retinue): Moderato
3. Menuet: Moderato
4. Ballet: Allegro giusto
The suite, which was composed from 1886 to 1889, was first performed on 2 February 1889 by Debussy and pianist-publisher Jacques Durand at a salon in Paris. It may have been written due to a request (possibly from Durand) for a piece that would be accessible to skilled amateurs, as its simplicity is in stark contrast with the modernist works that Debussy was writing at the time.
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Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Ma mère l'Oye
Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) is a suite by French composer Maurice Ravel. The piece was originally written as a five-movement piano duet in 1910. In 1911, Ravel orchestrated the work.
1. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant: Lent (Pavane of Sleeping Beauty)
2. Petit Poucet: Très modéré (Little Tom Thumb / Hop-o'-My-Thumb)
3. Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes: Mouvt de marche (Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas)
4. Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête: Mouvt de valse très modéré (Conversation of Beauty and the Beast)
5. Le jardin féerique: Lent et grave (The Fairy Garden)
Ravel originally wrote Ma mère l'Oye as a piano duet for the Godebski children,
Mimi and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children.
Cyprian Godebski (30 October 1835 – 25 November 1909) was a Polish sculptor and from 1870 a professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. He was the grandson of Polish poet and novelist Cyprian Godebski, creator of the "Legions poetry" genre, who had served in Napoleon's Polish Legions. Godebski received his art education at the Paris studio of sculptor François Jouffroy. He lived and worked in Lwów from 1858 and in 1861 moved to Vienna, where he worked on commissions from the Imperial court of Austro-Hungary. In 1863 Godebski moved to Paris again, and lived alternately in France and in Belgium. In 1870 accepted the nomination for the professorship at the Russian Academy of Arts and moved to St. Petersburg for several years. He was in Warsaw in 1870 and 1875.
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Arvo Pärt *1935
Pari intervallo
Arvo Pärt is one of those composers in the world, whose creative output has
significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music.
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. Pärt is one of those composers in the world, whose creative output has significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music.
Pari intervallo is a composition written in one movement in 1976 without fixed instrumentation. The composer later made versions for organ, two pianos or piano duet. Pari intervallo was one of seven works premiered in 1976 under the title tintinnabuli, the name of compositional style created by the composer.
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Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Le Bœuf sur le toit Op. 58
Darius Milhaud was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.
Le Bœuf sur le toit (literally "the ox on the roof"), Op. 58 is a short piece for small orchestra by the composer Darius Milhaud, written in 1919–20. Milhaud conceived the piece as incidental music for any one of the comic silent films of Charlie Chaplin, but it received its premiere as the music for a ballet staged by Jean Cocteau in February 1920.
Milhaud made several arrangements of the score: for violin and orchestra, violin and piano and two pianos.
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Bosba Panh *1997
le peu de temps qu'il nous reste for solo piano
Bosba Panh is a Cambodian, Western-educated composer. Influenced by French expressionism, European sacred music and American minimalism, her music explores the theme of loss and sacrifice while being accessible to an audience that ranges from music connoisseurs to amateurs. Prior to composition, Bosba began her career in Cambodia as a traditional folk singer at the age of 7. Her parents managed her vocal career. Their collaboration with Cambodian artists led to performances at venues such as Angkor Wat, the 13th-century UNESCO heritage site of temples. Bosba moved to the United States in 2012 to further her studies. She attended the Walnut Hill School for the Arts and now attends the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA studying with Michael Gandolfi and Ken Schaphorst. Amongst her musical influences are Herbert Howells, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Debussy, Ravel and Philip Glass.
‘le peu de temps qu'il nous reste for solo piano’ (2018-19) attempts to capture the essence of the passage of time, and how much yet so little each of us have left on earth. This piece first started as a styles exercise in 2018 which then continued on to become a short piano piece. I made use of the ostinato - used famously by a number of French composers, notably Ravel in his Boléro- to create a sense of restlessness and momentum.
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Eric Satie (1925-1866)
Trois Petites Pièces Montées
1. De l'enfance de Pantagruel (The Infancy of Pantagruel) – Rêverie
2. Marche de Cocagne (Cockaigne March) – Démarche
3. Jeux de Gargantua (Gargantua's Games) - Coin de Polka
Erik Satie, was a French composer whose spare, unconventional, often witty style exerted a major influence on 20th-century music, particularly in France.
The Trois petites pièces montées (Three Little Stuffed Pieces) is a suite for small orchestra by Erik Satie, inspired by themes from the novel series Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. It was premiered at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris on February 21, 1920, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann. Satie later arranged it for piano duet and today it is more frequently heard in this version.
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Colin McPhee (1900-1964)
Balinese Ceremonial Music
Part one : Gambangan
Part two: Pemoenkah
Part three: Taboeh Teloe
McPhee was born Montreal. He graduated from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD (1921) and studied in Paris with Paul Le Flem (1924-6) and in New York with Edgard Vare`se (ca. 1927); he was based in the US from 1926, except for the years he spent in Indonesia; went to Bali in the early 1930s after having heard recordings of Indonesian music, where he composed the toccata Tabuh-Tabuhan; his books A house in Bali (1946), Dance in Bali (1948), and Music in Bali (1966) gained him an international recognition as an authority on Balinese culture.
In this arrangement, Colin McPhee has attempted to get across the general flavour of this ceremonialmusic.Tuning differences are of course an obstacle, but since it is normal in Bali for a piece written for one type of gamelan to be performed on another - for instance the smaller gamelan anklung - with a different tuningsystem,this is not considered a difficulty.
