Tema con Perversioni

[Thorolf]

Commissioned 1991 for a Show Concert revolving around Mozart.

Built on Rondo Alla Turca for piano solo.

Played by the Symphonic Band that commissioned it.



Regards

[MaestroX]

Wow really nice Thorolf, you've really made some great variations of the themes in Rondo alla Turca. The surpirise of the delicate clarinet parts being interupted by the blaring brass band was awesome!

How did the audience like it?

Just out of interest what does "Tema con Perversioni" mean?

[Thorolf]

Thanks for comments!

Both the band and the audience loved it. I got another commission from the same band for their new show concert the year after…

Tema con variationen = Theme with variations
Tema con Perversioni = Theme with perversions…

Just a hint that this is not your ordinary variations…



Regards

[MaestroX]

Definitely, I'm going to show this among friends, I think many of them would love it

Thanks for sharing

[Whataguy!]

The jazzy brass in tutti in the middle sounds fun to play. Sounded something like Stan Kenton's band would do. Would have been nice to hear a screaming trumpet a la Maynard but...

I loved the harmonies in the brass band sounding section at around 03:00 into the piece. They were fun and reminded me of of Carl Stalling.

Great, Thorolf.

[reith]

Hah! Maynard Ferguson - love his sound! I see what you mean about that Kentony flavour in the first outburst then the harmony at 2'43/2'50. Highly original all the same.

Very satisfying piece - wonderful - doubly so because it aims at Micky Mozart. Nicely perverted.
Great use of the bass; superb closing section - about puts it in perspective.

Altogether good!

[Majesty]

This was a fun piece! You did such a great job with the "perverse" variations. I really loved the rhythm in the percussion at 3:15. Everything at 3:15 was great! Loved it!

This kind of reminds of PDQ Bach.

[Ballaw de Quincewold]

Oh Wow! How did I miss this? Very cool piece!!! It seems like you could have gone on for much longer than you did with this idea though. Do you have an uploadable score for this? There are some things that I'd love to see.

[Thorolf]

Hi, and thanks for all the comments! I haven’t got ’round to revise the score (I wrote this before I had any Concert Band conducting experience, and reformulating what was intended in the first place will help new performances a lot… ), so I guess you’ll have to wait a little to see it, Ballaw Thanks for your interrest, tho!

And, Whataguy!, the harmonies @ 3:00 is just the simple trick of adding a full major chord to every melodic note, and get polytonality a cheap and safe way that needs no skillz at all: For the melodic notes A B and C#, just use full A major B major and C# major chords, etc., while keeping the accompagnement straight. Easy, anyone can do it but it’s a cool trick, and sits well with the audience…

What anyone can’t do, is to insert yet another layer of tonality in the middle, the blaring trombones, horns and string synthesizer, as I do in your favourite 3:15 part, Majesty! To take the whole piece up one whole tone and add samba are tricks of the trade, but the tritonality emerging from this line is not. You can imagine my joy when I found that simple line: “That’ll show them!”

As for making it longer, it’s of course possible, but I wanted it compact like the original, and with not more than one perversion per theme, yet with a hint of development after the first tutti. And for a show concert, that turned out to be just the right form. A statement, nothing more, nothing less.



Thanks again for listening and comments!

Regards

[Ballaw de Quincewold]

ohhhhh...I didn't realize that there was a variation for each theme. That makes it seem much more well rounded now. Any chance of seeing a score or did you write this before there were good notation programs?