Robert Muczynski Time Pieces

Описание: Haley Harrison, Clarinet
Albert Newberry, Piano

Piece no. 4 of my second master's recital at JSoM
4/6/24

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Time Pieces for clarinet and piano Op. 43 (1983)
Robert Muczynski (1929 – 2010)

Polish-American composer and pianist, Robert Muczynski, was born in Chicago in 1929. His love for piano began with an interest in his grandmother’s player-piano, which he soon turned around and began playing himself at the age of 5. He studied piano and composition with Alexander Tcherepnin at DePaul University. Muczynski’s compositions are mainly concentrated on piano and small chamber works, but he has composed for many wind instruments, as well, including flute, saxophone, clarinet, trios, and woodwind quintets. His works are considered Neoclassicist with a temperance of romantic mood and affect – including 5 and 7-beat meters, blue notes, and “friendly-modernism” which equates to tonal music with dissonance asymmetrical rhythms.

The Time Pieces, Op. 43 was commissioned by CSO clarinetist, Mitchell Lurie, who premiered the work with Muczynski in 1984 at the Clarinet Congress of the International Clarinet Society in London. The title of this piece refers to when and where Muczynski composed the work – making it feel frozen in time for him. Movement 1 takes influence from South American percussive rhythms in the piano and jazz with the clarinet’s syncopation, blue notes, and use of dominant 7s. The second movement is a lament with vibrato and free-use rubato that allows performers to express romantically. Movement 3 offers a combination of jazz and tango which sounds like the first movement of the Bernstein Clarinet Sonata. Movement 4 begins with solo clarinet demonstrating expressive rubato/emotional outbursts leading to an upbeat allegro section where the triplet 16ths act as castanets (South American inspo.) and ultimately leading to an aggressive call-and-response towards the end of the movement, the clarinet ultimately wins and bursts into a cadenza. Muczynski believed that performers should have free interpretation of his works to keep things lively, but interpretation should still follow the characteristics printed on the page.