Recordings

The following recordings of each movement is from Joel Becker's Masters Piano Recital, Pensacola Christian College, 2006.

Performing: Joel Becker, David Hill, Gustavo Peterlevitz

(A recording of each movement is available with each movement's description below.)

Description

In preparation for my recital, I needed a modern classical piece. Since I love composing, the obvious solution to me was to compose my own. Besides, it's a lot easier to memorize and play your own composition than someone else's.

The name "Piano Suite for One Piano and Two, Three, then Two Pianists" is clear, I think. Two pianists play the first movement, three play the second (gets a little warm), then two play the last. The way I prefer to assign the pianists to parts is as follows. On the first movement have pianist A on the bottom and B on the top. On the second movement, A and B shift to the right for pianist C to join on the bottom, with B now in the middle and A still on the top. Then in the third movement, B and C shift to the right, pushing A off the bench. Figuratively. Ok, admittedly that would be pretty humorous to see it literally.

I. Two-Pianist Invention

The first movement starts the suite in a rather light flavor. The title, as you may have guessed, is based on the title "two-part invention," known especially from the works of J.S. Bach. In a two-part invention, two melodies sing simultaneously, playfully exchanging motives, working together in a flowing counterpoint. In a two-pianist invention, then, each pianist plays one of two musical objects. I define a musical object as a distinguisheable entity in musical space. ...Reader, please come back. Oops, I should save those kind of definitions for the Electro-acoustic section. In other words, instead of two interacting melodies, we have two interacting piano pieces, so to speak. As you listen to one of the parts, you will hear that it consists of full chords, alternating pitches at the octave, broken chord effects, and other musical devices.

II. Ostinati

This is the most interesting movement, and my favorite consequently. Ostinati is, of course, the plural of ostinato, with is a continually-repeating musical figure. This movement centers on the morphing, mysteriously complex ostinati in the middle of the piano's range. Above and below it are melodies and motives of increasing activity and intensity, until the ostinati in the middle ignite a series of intensifying 'explosions,' which then conclude the piece back to the original ostinato figure. That figure then forks into two ostinati, revealing the mysterious ostinato's two surprisingly simple components.

III. Harmon-o-matic

The third and final movement is even lighter in character than the first, and a definite contrast with the quite grave middle movement. There is little to explain; it speaks for itself. Just in case you don't get what the title is about, remember in the 1980's especially, all of those "amazing" products on infomercials: the "slice-o-matic", "dice-omatic", "sweep-o-matic", "slap-o-matic", etc., etc.? (Ok, so I made those up because I didn't research any exact product names.) Well, so here is the music version. It's like a little machine that pumps out silly music meant to entice people to call the 1-800 number and order their Harmon-o-matic right away! So hurry while supplies last! And now for a limited time, you can get three harmon-o-matics for the price of one!! Yada yada...