Hello fellow composers. I'm a young composer residing in Cincinnati and I just finished a live recording of a seven minute suite. The suite is a combination of incidental music I wrote for my highschool's production of The Cherry Orchard. I don't know many people who could give me constructive feedback on this composition so I thought i'd come here.
https://soundcloud.com/dperrea/the-cherry-orchard-suite
There's the recording. I've also attached the master score at the bottom. There are a few discrepancies, the main one is the removal of measures 96-104.
It was recorded at CCM (Cincinnati Conservatory of Music) with a couple musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Curious to know what y'all think. Also feel free to ask me questions if you have any.
(EDIT: Attached the score PDF as a file instead of a link)
Replies
What is the instrumentation? Violin(s), cello, piano, flute, clarinet/bassoon? I did not listen to all of it and I don't know the Cherry Orchard to comment on how fitting this is but I enjoyed what I heard. You sound to be writing in the "comfort" ranges of the instruments and taking advantage of their best qualities resulting in some very well balanced music especially given the small size of the ensemble. It has a certain French feel. Ultimately it comes across as very assured quality writing.
There are some intonation slips from the strings but these things happen. Are there any points where two violins are playing in unison? I'd be interested in seeing the score.
The score is in that link at the very bottom there (i'll edit it to make it more clear). The instrumentation is Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Piano. Five of those (aside from the clarinet) was the original instrumentation when I wrote the music a few years back but I decided to add the Clarinet for this recording to add a little more color and because it's mentioned in the original script for the play.
All of this was recorded in about two hours, with no rehearsals (tight budget for a 17 year old) so there were some intonation problems we had to deal with, but nothing too major. The Viola and Cello players were the two professional players, and the rest were students at CCM.
Charles Holt said:
How lucky you are to have a group of real people to play your work.
Really enjoyed this work this morning. Blended well together and, although I know nothing of the subject matter, I didn't feel left out of the piece in its own right.
In terms of scoring, I'd like to see more dynamics, hairpins etc as they help folk who dont know the piece as well. The piano has some wild stretches which i suspect your player would reduce.
Overall, very nice. Good work.
A few things need a little look at but the main one is why Tenor Clef for nearly all of the cello part? The majority of it should be in the bass clef with occasional forays into other clefs surely.
Pleasant enough piece though.
Thanks for sharing.