The joy of music

Jonathan and I went to see the DeCesare-Francis Piano Duo perform Recital Under Construction at the Thousand Oaks Civic Center this evening.

The Duo is composed of local music professors Mona Wu DeCesare and Edward A. Francis. Piano Education has interviews with both: DeCesare and Francis.

The evening was well done, with classical before intermission and some sort of swing and classical variation afterward where they let their hair down and played around a bit. The highlight of the evening for me (and perhaps for Jon... he went to bed when we got home) was their rendition of 'Paramell V' by Stephen Montague (more here). Wow! I really want to hear this again and again. I'd heard everything else they played but was unprepared for this. A recital review from down under describes it this way for a duo called 2:10 ...

I liked, too, the duo's response to Stephen Montague's Paramell V, a little work that requires busy fingers, staying power and the ability to build up to massive climaxes.

He's not kidding. This thing really crashes on you. It's very modern, it has some odd tonal qualities including some harshness and I think I really, really like it.

DeCesare and Francis play it as a tribute to September 11 and ask that no one clap when the piece is finished. Jon's hands were hanging in the air when I pushed them back into his lap and whispered enough so he knew we weren't doing that (he was bit miffed because he really liked it, I explained things during intermission).

Unfortunately, the DeCesare-Francis CD, Piano Music for Four Hands doesn't include it.

Amazon has a Montague chamber music CD that I might take a gamble on, even though that's not usually my thing. The sample for 'Behold A Pale Horse' was interesting!

A great night of music and I have learned something new that I need to dive into.