Recital: Avi Randall '23, CMA

Avi Randall | Suite in G Minor

Felix Mendelssohn | Andante espressivo ma con moto  (Mvt. III from String Quartet No. 3, op. 44)
arr. Carson McHaney

Alberto Ginastera | Danza de la moza donosa  (No. 2 from Danzas Argentinas, op. 2)
arr. Avi Randall

Avi Randall | Demon Dance

Saltare

Saltare brings together musical and dance traditions from around the world and explores the many ways that dance music is shaped and understood. Saltare originally met in NEC’s Contemporary Musical Arts department, where they played in the Middle Eastern Ensemble. They have since moved into many other types of music, including Irish, Transylvanian, American Old Time, and Klezmer music, original compositions, and arrangements of European Classical Music. Each of their ventures explores the ways that rhythm, melody, and groove can create an immersive experience of energy and emotion, and express the joy from movement and dance. 

Traditional Laz, Georgia | Heyamoli

Text

“Let’s say one or two words about your beauty.
I’m going to leave my mother and father and I’ll be yours, only yours.
Everyone is happy, but you’re not satisfied.” 

Traditional Guria, Georgia (ca. 12th c.) | Shen Khar Venakhi

Text

“Thou art a vineyard, newly blooming.
Tender, beauteous, from Eden sprung,
A fragrant sapling by Heaven raised.
May God adorn thee: none else affords more praise.
Thou art thyself like a luminous sun.”

Avi Randall | Nocturne for the Left Hand Only

Program note

I wrote this piece modeled on Alexander Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand Only, op. 9 during my sophomore year. It was a fun challenge to explore counterpoint, complex harmonic passages, and virtuosic piano technique with only one hand while still writing a piece full of emotion.

Avi Randall | Quartet for Clarinet, Strings, and Piano

Program note

Most of my classical compositions are for solo piano, and while this gives me infinite opportunities to write and perform my own music, it also restricts me from writing for other musicians. I wrote this piece to involve my wonderful and talented peers and to engage the musical director part of me. When I was writing this piece, I imagined a battle with a tragic victory. I believe this piece has a happy ending, but it is marred by loss, grief, and anger. 

Leo Ornstein | Piano Sonata No. 4 (1918)

Moderato con moto
Semplice
Lento
Vivo

Program note

Leo Ornstein was a pianist, composer, and improviser who pioneered the “Futurist” approach to classical music. As a child, he was seen as a prodigy and was enrolled in both the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories. His family emigrated to New York in the early 1900s in part due to the pogroms in Russia. After moving, he studied with teachers at both Juilliard and New England Conservatory, before becoming one of the most widely known American pianists. During his tours as a concert pianist, he improvised, played his own compositions, and even gave the American premiere of Gaspard de la Nuit, a notoriously difficult piece written by Maurice Ravel. His compositional style was incredibly controversial - he was one of the first composers to explore clusters on the piano and was one of the earliest composers to explore atonality. The risks he took in his performances and compositions had one critic say “I never thought I should live to hear Arnold Schoenberg sound tame, yet tame he sounds—almost timid and halting—after Ornstein who is, most emphatically, the only true-blue, genuine, Futurist composer alive.”
        Unfortunately, Leo Ornstein stopped performing publicly in early 1920s, and only ever recorded a few piano rolls, mostly of other composer’s works. He then founded a music school in Philadelphia with his wife, where he taught until it closed in 1953. Among the school’s students were jazz legends such as John Coltrane and Jimmy Smith. Ornstein then spent most of his life composing and teaching and fell into obscurity. He had a handful of renaissances to the greater musical community, but to this day remains sorely underrepresented and performed. Ornstein died in 2002 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  In a final interview, he imparted this wisdom: “This looking for the meaning of life, is something extraneous. I think life, the way we lead it, is the meaning. Trying to seek for an inner meaning is a myth, if there’s a power behind it, or a god, who knows…who knows.” Having spent much of his compositional career doubting his sanity due to his shocking and avant-garde style, Ornstein’s words reflect the melancholy and existential dread present in so much of his music. His musical personality and uniqueness is an inspiration, as he lived his life paying attention to his musical desires, flying in the face of critics, and pursuing inspiration in whatever form it took. 
        His fourth Piano Sonata is a lyrical, harmonic, and emotional masterpiece. The sonata has soaring beautiful melodies that evoke traditional Jewish music, combined with deep and rich harmonies that breathe color, depth, and poignancy into every passing moment. His style is so vivid that he is able to hide extreme dissonances in plain sight without disrupting his tonal system. He uses a single repeating melodic fragment throughout the sonata to tie every movement together - this motif will first appear during the second movement , and is the basis for much of the 3rd and 4th movements.

Avi Randall | An Episode

Program note

An experimental composition that aims to immerse the audience in a meditative and hallucinatory experience.