Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Disappointed by cd purchase

I recently purchased a cd of music by the likes of Cowell and Ives.... Clearly a very acquired taste. I could not listen to the whole cd. Does that happen to others, or am I being too harsh? The Wildmen of this cd were not the easiest to listen to!

If the CD you bought is of piano music you might find their orchestral music much more approachable.

The only Cowell I've heard is his piano concerto which I enjoyed - though the piano technique it requires isn't exactly orthodox.

Ives is a fascinating and amazingly innovative composer. Many of his works have entered the mainstream orchestral repertoire and are well worth exploring: The Unanswered Question, Central Park in the Dark, Three Places in New England.

There was a very good programme broadcast on BBC Radio 3 last year giving the background and some analysis of those very pieces. If anyone is interested I will try to upload it to box.net.

Did you not know what you were getting into? Their stuff if all over youtube!

I happen to love this kind of thing. But when you write "I could not listen to the whole cd," it suggests you were listening to all the tracks in a row, one piece after another. I couldn't do that either.

Instead, I would focus on one or two pieces at a time. Listen to them over and over, get used to their sounds, figure out their "internal structure", at the very least when the main themes repeat. After a couple days, if the experiment is successful, you'll find the music has become a part of you. Then try the next couple pieces.

Another thing is to follow along in the score-- we are pianists, after all. For me, that helps immensely with digesting difficult music. Youtube has a video of Ornstein's Wild Men's Dance with the score.

That's my advice, anyway.

-Jason

Slightly OT... I recently found out about Ornstein by chance, while doing an assignment for a music research class. Did you know he lived to be 109 years old!

For me.....

-- Such pieces often require repeated hearings before I "get" them.
-- I'm more likely to 'get it' (or get something about it) sooner if it's a live performance.

Thanks team,

I will listen again, but not in one sitting!