NEW YORK (www.generation-media.com) - On November 12,Th 2004 at 7:00 PM, Faust Harrison Pianos will host an evening of music by British Clarinetist
Peter Furniss and American pianist Paul Fejko (pronounced FAY-CO).
The evening will begin with Mr. Fejko performing Sonata for Piano by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. Martinu composed this work for his friend Rudolph Serkin. While a young student at the Curtis
Institute in Philadelphia (where Mr. Serkin once taught on faculty) Mr. Fejko was introduced to the work by Mr. Serkin and has kept it in his repertory ever since. This twenty-minute work holds particular interest and surprise for those who are familiar with Martinu's work. Unlike other chamber and piano compositions by him, the Sonata for Piano is forward-looking in its use of mixed modal sonorities and as well as ostinati that point toward minimalist concepts that were yet to be explored by composers from Martinu's period.
Mr. Fejko will also perform Debussy's well known Children's Corner suite. A piano suite written late in the career of
Claude Debussy, The Children's Corner was written for Claude-Emma, Debussy's illegitimate daughter. The piece illustrates Debussy's spontaneity and his acute insight into the child's mind. Debussy wrote The Children's Corner in 1908 as a French counterpart to Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's song cycle, The Nursery.
The second half of the program will open with Mr. Furniss accompanied by Mr. Fejko in a performance of Leonard Bernstein's Sonata 1942 for clarinet and piano, and will be followed by Michael Kaulkin's work entitled American Standard for piano and clarinet (1993). Both of these works are preview performances for Mr. Furniss's upcoming CD release, which surveys and several decades of music for piano and clarinet by American composers. Leonard Bernstein's Sonata for clarinet and piano was his first published work. It was among the first solo clarinet works to combine the conventional "legit" clarinet idiom with elements of jazz and Latin music. Michael Kaulkin's 1993 American Standard strikes a perfect balance of the poignant and the comical. Through the interlocking of soaring, lyrical passages with raucous, grotesque dances, Kaulkin has built a nine-minute dynamo of a work. This performance will also be the New York premiere for Mr. Kaulkin's work.
The evening will conclude with Igor Stravinsky's spiky and jocular work Piano-Rag-Music (1919). Stravinsky described Piano-Rag
Music as "a written-out portrait of improvisation". An often misunderstood work by some performers, Stravinsky's Piano-Rag-Music is certainly not just another rag, but rather, a deconstruction and reinvention of Ragtime piano music.
Tickets for this event are $15.00 general admission and can be purchased by calling 212 352-3101 or go to
www.theatermania.com to order online and view a complete listing of this event. Faust Harrison Pianos is located at 205 West 58th street New York NY, one block west of 7th avenue. For more information about this concert and other events at Faust Harrison Pianos please contact Tony Scafide at 917 217 3584 or e-mail protected from spam bots or visit
www.faustharrisonpianos.com.
