Deciding What to Play

One of my favorite things to do - besides actually performing - is to dream up potential recital programs. Because I have interests that encompass many different areas of classical music, I’m always striving to satisfy both my own artistic palate and that of the audience that is paying to hear me play. Easily the most difficult part of programming repertoire - for me - is to come up with a recital that is diverse in style, character, era, and sound world but is cohesive enough to keep audience members interested throughout.

I don’t have specific steps that I go through when I program recital music. Often I think about three things:

1. What do I want to play?
2. What do I want to say to the audience?
3. Is the music that I’m choosing accessible to even the newest classical music audience member?
4.  Will anyone leave at intermission? (So, I don’t really ask myself this question, but I do wonder...) 

from Brian Kelly's Sonata for solo cello

Sometimes, a simple theme is enough for the casual audience member.  For example, when I was in graduate school, I developed a program that I called “Face à Face: music for duos.”  The repertoire include Zoltan Kodaly’s Duo for violin and cello, John Tavener’s Akhmatova Songs for soprano and cello, Beethoven’s Duo for viola and cello “with two eyeglasses obligato” and Brahms’ Sonata no. 2 in F Major.

By purposefully programming music for eclectic duos, I was hoping that the audience would find interest in the different sonorities presented - obviously, cello and piano is much different than cello and soprano! For all intents and purposes, it worked! Talking to audience members after the performance reinforced my belief that interesting music results in interested audiences.  

from Joseph Colombo's Not I for solo cello

In subsequent recitals, I’ve sought to mimic the idea of a unifying theme, even if that theme is known only to me!  A recent performance was titled - in my head - Op. 6 and included three works: Samuel Barber’s Sonata, op. 6, Richard Strauss’ Sonata, op. 6, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in F Major, op. 5, no. 1. Certainly someone must have realized the subtle play with numbers. With these three pieces, what was actually on display was the early compositional method of three recognized masters.

from Andrew Paul Jackson's You are missing here
for solo cello

It would be difficult to talk about programming without discussing my current project, Queering the Pitch.  This project is the largest planed recital series that I’ve undertaken to this point in my young career.  In my mind, I see it as four separate but united parts: two for solo cello, one for cello and soprano, and one for cello and piano. The first challenge in programming such a project was first finding composers who were openly queer during their lives or, in the case of living composers, who are wiling to be known and potentially pigeonholed as a gay composer.

from Benjamin Britten's Third Suite for Cello

This was not nearly as difficult as I originally thought it might be. Throughout history, there have been a huge number of gay composers. There are countless composers currently living who are not only openly gay, but more than willing to be known as such.  The first challenge arose when searching for works for solo cello by these composers.  Solo cello repertoire between Bach and the 20^th-century is mostly non-existent (an exaggeration, but not entirely...) and some of the more prolific gay composers from the pre-20^th century wrote nothing for the genre.

Crazy fingerings from Ned Rorem's
After Reading Shakespeare

The three works that I settled on satisfy my three (non-mandatory) bullet points from above. I love playing Benjamin Britten’s Suites for Cello and I’ve been trying to find a reason to play Ned Rorem’s After Reading Shakespeare for a while.  I was worried that my fourth bullet point would come in to play, and that people would leave after hear the Rorem - I’ll be completely honest, it’s not the easiest piece to listen to at times.

from Dominick DiOrio's Tarantella for solo cello

Programming is not easy.  Music has a different influence on each individual. One person, who is dear to my heart and who has heard me play countless times, has told me on more than one occasion that a lot of the music that I play makes him uncomfortable and that he finds himself sitting on his hands during performances.  Sometimes, that’s the goal.  Discomfort is just as much a part of music as the music that they put on those Classics for Relaxation CDs. When programming recitals, I often stick to an infallible rule: would my mother still love me after she heard the piece I just played?  If the answer is no, then I should probably jettison that piece from the program. But if the answer is yes, well, then it’s a go!