Free

What is free?  With any luck the spirit remains free.  The internet provides a wonderful outlet for freedom of expression.  It is up to you, dear reader, to gauge for yourself the value of what you read on the web. 

If I didn't believe strongly in free I wouldn't be doing this blog.  In order to express the thoughts you read here some considerable distance is required from the commercially-determined conventional music/academic world. 

Support it.  Go to www.tonalrefraction.net to learn how. 

Thanks!.

First Impressions

My newly rebuilt Mason & Hamlin AA grand has the most lustrous sound.  Every time I play Dvorak I am reminded of how dangerous it is to form wrong first impressions of such works as his Waltzes or the Suite in A Major, works I first heard in orchestrated versions.  No orchestration can capture the overtone glow that causes harmonies to merge rather than modulate.  Before the rebuilding I could get away with playing these works on the piano while hearing the orchestral version in my head.  Thank goodness that is no longer possible: the orchestration has been overpowered by the pianistic dimension that inspired these works in the first place.