The
adage “April showers bring May flowers” signals the time for gardening, a
favorite pastime of Tomoko. She considers it as a way to wake up, to recharge
her psychic batteries. “It’s a fresh feeling.”
Refresh
yourself with these ten piano pieces inspired by gardens, with a little
information about each piece.
In
the 1930s Hungarian Bela
Bartok wrote
a collection of 85 short pieces entitled For Children. One of those compositions
is "Rose
Garden." These pieces attest to his
belief in the importance to educating youngsters in contemporary musical styles.
Amy Beach was the first major
American female composer of large-scale art music. Her 1922 Opus 97, Grandmother’s Garden, consists of five parts, each
capturing a different flower.
Aaron Copland’s Down a Country Lane was commissioned by Life
magazine to be featured in a 1962 issue, which includes photographs and an
article explaining that this piano piece was one of the few compositions
written express for young students by a major composer.
Claude Debussy’s “Jardins sur la pluie” (Gardens in the rain) is
part of his 1903 composition Estampes (Prints). It captures the round of
raindrops that storm a French garden.
As
a gift to his mother, Australian Percy Aldridge Grainger arranged an English folk
tune into the 1918 piano piece “Country Gardens.” The piece was his greatest success
financially, selling over 40,000 copies yearly in the United States. However, Grainger
came to resent having to perform it constantly.
A
visit to a monastic garden inspired English composer Albert Ketelbey to write “In a Monastery Garde.” In 1915. Ketelbey was known for
light orchestral music, and wrote music for silent films.
Czech
composer Bohuslav
Martinu’s
1938 suite Window on the Garden consists of four lyrical
movements. The piece reflects his short stay in Paris just before escaping from
the forthcoming Nazi invasion.
Edward McDowell was America’s best known
composer at the beginning of the 20th century. His 1902 piano New England Idyls combines classical European
harmonic elements and American textual imagery, as exemplified in the piece "An Old Garden."
Rachmaninoff
became known for his lyrical inspiration, where the piano captures the
sentiments of the text. Lilacs,
Op 21, No.
5 “Lilacs, along with Daisies” was composed in 1902 as a song with accompaniment,
but was later transcribed as a sensitive piano solo miniature.
In
1893 Tchaikowsky wrote his last solo piano work, 18 Pieces, one a day. Value-bluette, No.
11, was dedicated to the daughter of his lawyer and friend Nikolay Kondratyev.
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