Looking for pianist to record/perform original sonata

Hi all, I'm a composer and recently finished an original piano sonata that is classical/romantic in style. It was featured in Yahoo's Composition Quarters and the members there liked it a lot. I'm looking for a good pianist who can record and/or perform it. I eventually want to put it on a CD of my music. We can work out some sort of monetary compensation in that case.

You can hear and view the score here: http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/alombardi

There's an mp3 for each movement. The mp3s are pretty good MIDI renderings, but I expect it'll sound a lot better played by a real person. The last movement is probably the most 'exciting'. The whole thing is around 23 minutes long. Let me know what you think if you listen to it!

Thanks, Anthony Lombardi

Much to my surprise, I actually like it. I only listened to the first movement tonight, but I bookmarked it to hear the rest later. You should call it silent movie. It brought back great memories of the piano music that used to accompany the movies in the days before talking pictures. That isn't a criticism, it's good stuff.

Thanks a lot Gerry! There's definitely some good film music out there, though I haven't really heard much of the kind that compliments silent movies.

Let me know what you think of the rest.

Anthony Lombardi

Maybe your music wasn't interesting enough in the end ...? I heard your pieces and i was thinking *why* you wrote them the way you did. I was not so enthousiastic, as the harmonies were dealt with in a rather poor way, and the melodical material did not convince me. (No offense, just my own opinion about your music as presented. I would like to encourage you to write more, and think through why you write in the first place, and maybe in the future you will write down some really masterpieces!)

Regards, Tjako van Schie, pianist

Thanks for your opinion. I've recieved about 20 responses about it. You're 1 of 2 that flat out didn't like it. I guess you can't please everyone.

I wrote the sonata the way I did because I was exploring the romantic and classical styles. Is that good enough? If it isn't, maybe you can tell me why I should be writing.

Anthony Lombardi

So you're saying that any new composer has to invent a completely different style of music in order to interest you. To me, that sounds like a way to close one's mind to alot of potentially good music. I'm not criticizing you, I just find your comment a little curious because I don't operate that way. The fact that I've already disovered many beautiful sonatas written by Mozart or Beethoven does not make me unreceptive to finding more by other composers.

Whatever. I just make music, and let musicologists worry about style. Lately, people have been telling me that stuff of mine that reminds me vaguely of Dvorak and Schoenberg reminds them of Copland

Composers don't explore styles. Composers make pieces of music, using whatever tools it takes to make those pieces satisfy themselves. Styles are explored by historians and theorists after the fact. Sometimes historians and theorists have something important to teach composers about where in existing literature to find examples of craft to learn from. But the roles of historian and theorist are not roles of composer, nor models for composers. The vast majority of composers from the 18th and 19th century are unknown to the classical-music-loving public. Emulating stylistic features which you learn from historians is no guarantee that your music will become known to this public or beloved by them. If you get lucky and it does, it won't be because of the emulation

I agree wholeheartedly. However, I don't think listeners whould worry excessively about 'style' either.

Why can't a composer also have an interest in musical history and theory? And compose a piece within (what he analyses as) the parameters of a particular style or period?

We all, at some time, performed the exercise of writing 'Bach' type 4-part harmony. Is it impossible that we might have written something of value?