Piano and Keyboard Performances of Kenneth Kuhn
rev. May 9, 2020

On this page I present various live recordings I have made over the years playing the piano or electronic keyboard.  All of these recordings were made on cassette tape and some have a few tape issues. Right now the page is Spartan as it is being developed.  It will eventually have more information including the composers.

Acoustic piano recordings:

Andante Religioso (piano and organ) (7:24)

Adagio Tranquillo e molto Dramatico (34:13) This was recorded late one evening in the first week of June, 1974.  This music came spontaneously to me in 1973 and I this was the final version that I later wrote down.  The recording served as a memory jog.  The title is truly a description of the work -- no other title would be right.  This work is very unusual in that the first playing of the work a year earlier I just watched my hands perform the piece as I had no clue as to where it was going.  This final version is true to the original except cleaned up a bit.  This is a deeply personal work that parallels my life.  Later analysis of the work revealed that the introduction is a beating heart and the main theme (representing me) is incomplete and is on a quest to find a proper ending and attempts a number of routes through companion themes but fails.  The very traumatic middle section represents ultimate despair and I listened in amazement as my hands, unguided by me, first played this in 1973.  Peace comes in the closing section of the work as the main theme finally does find its proper ending -- an event so subtle that it could easily be missed.  Even the introduction finds its proper ending too in the highest notes of the piano and in the softest that the piano can be played.  Some of those notes are inaudible in this recording although you can hear them in your mind.  The final chord includes D above the highest C on the piano and thus can not be played -- but is inferred.

more recordings are coming ... 


Electronic Keyboard recordings:

"Moonlight" Sonata (6:50)

Nocturne in Eb (5:01)

Waltz (3:59)

Etude (2:59)

Spring Impromptu (1:19)

Song of the Lark (0:50)

Andante Religioso (6:57)

Gymnopedy No. 1 (4:49)

Adagio for Strings (9:56)

Adagietto (14:43)

more recordings are coming ...


Early piano recordings of The Revelation of Nature

For many years the only method I had for keeping the music to my epic tone poem, The Revelation of Nature, was to make cassette recordings of me playing various portions on the piano as writing the music by had was much too arduous.  I knew that someday I would write the music and these recordings were very valuable in that process.  In all cases the knowledge of the notes was stored in the part of my brain that controls my hands.  From memory only I could not write the notes.  I had to see what my hands were doing.  Hearing the music from recordings enabled my hands to remember.  The following consists of two complete movements and various fragments.  Listen to the following only if you are interested in some historical and personal aspects of The Revelation of Nature.  See The Revelation of Nature for the completed orchestral version as recorded on my orchestral synthesizer under computer control and without human errors.  These are all of the recordings I have including a number of oops.

Here are two recordings of the overture.  The overture was composed in early 1985 and this recording was made in March, 1985.  These recordings are prior to the addition of the opening horn fanfare added in 1989.  This recording contains the first ending of the overture which fortells the ending later used.  It is clearly based on the revelation music of the fourth movement but at that time I did not want to copy that.

This is a fragment of the overture also recording in March, 1985 that begins with the climatic recapitulation of the opening theme and has an improved ending but still not what was finally used.

This is the only known early recording of part of the first movement and was made in August, 1981.  This portion is the sunrise and was composed in 1979.

tron2_piano.mp3 (36:42) The Colors of Autumn.  This recording was made on Sept 28, 1975 after finalizing the piece in my head.  Later the fragment below was added at the end of the first section and these two recordings were used to make the final version in 2003.  This recording was done on an older cassette recorder that did not have Dolby noise reduction and also was not of the best quality.  The version here is as is but I intend to run it through some processing software that can remove the tape hiss when I have some time.  At the time of this recording the working title was A Year in the Wilderness and had the four movements: The Majesty of Summer (only fragments existed at that time), The Colors of Autumn, The Snows of Winter (only fragments existed at that time -- later the title was changed to The Moods of Winter), and The Blossoms of Spring.  The movement is mostly in E-flat major although tape transport differences may have skewed that a little.

tron2_frag_piano.mp3  (3:07) This is a brief recording of some music added to the end of the first section of The Colors of Autumn.  This recording was made sometime after 1975, probably _____

tron4_piano.mp3 (29:10) The Blossoms of Spring.  This is a grand recording I made of the finale on Feb. 13, 1982 after finalizing the piece in my head.  At that time the work had the temporary title, The Infinite Creation.  All of this was done entirely from memory and there are various mistakes that were corrected when I finalized the music in 2003.  The original performance time was noted as 28:56.  The time of this recording is slightly longer probably due to differences in tape transport speed and a few seconds of blank space at the beginning and ending. 

The following fragments are early development of the finale.  I do not have any dates of these recordings but most likely they were done in the fall of 1981.  I post them here because there may be some people interested in The Revelation of Nature and are curious to know about how the work developed and what was going on in the mind of the composer -- these are the purest form as every note is direct from the mind as it would be over twenty years before any notes were written.  At the time of these recordings I was still in the composing process and you can hear interesting differences from the final version.  You can hear the music taking shape as the takes progress.  There are many mistakes -- some because of lack of skill and others because I was still trying to determine what the notes were and keeping everything in my head -- taxing my memory to the max.  These recordings were made at different times on different tapes and the recording dates are not known other than sometime in the summer and fall of 1981.  I have tried to arrange the takes in the most likely order.  Sometimes this was easy as most were on a single tape.  But others were on different tapes.  All of these lead up to the recording of the entire movement above.  Considerable rehearsal was required to have any chance of making a recording of the entire movement with only minimal errors.


New life on the meadows

This is believed to be the first take of the opening and was recording was made in August, 1981. It includes The Migration Returns march

The migration returns

 

First ending: The joy of ignorance

 

Confusion over death

 

Second ending: The Revelation

 

Third ending: The great resolve and Nature's celebration


This fragment is believed to be the oldest recording of the finale.  Its recording date is not known but could be from around 1980 to early summer of 1981.  It picks up at the closing of The Joy of Ignorance and the music clearly predates later recordings below.


more fragments are coming ...




Email contact information

Link back to the main music page or http://www.kennethkuhn.com for my complete web site.