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 ...