Music Concert Critique Sample

For my concert critique, I went to Jason Terry’s Doctoral Piano Recital on Tuesday, December 1st at the School of Music in room 206. Because Terry was able to pick the pieces he played, he picked a range of different pieces to emphasize his wide range of talent. He included older and modern pieces including Bach, Godowsky, Balakirev, Zorn, and Liszt. The first piece he played was “Prelude & Fugue, BWV 872” composed by Bach. I was a little unsure about the nature and form of this piece because it was unlike some of the more structured pieces we listen to in class. As I heard it, it seemed to be a kind of theme and variations theme, with small differences in each repetition of the theme. After the prelude, the fugue had its own motives with …show more content…
This piece is a compilation of 3 different parts. Zorn uses exact lines and some variations taken from composers like Mozart and Chopin, musical styles, including jazz, country, and funk, as inspiration for phrases, and some phrases are of his own composition completely. It is very hard to explain this piece, because it is completely all over the place. There is not one specific characteristic, theme, style, or motive that carries throughout the piece that I could hear. As I was taking notes, I wrote that it was dramatic with some loud notes, and lots of crescendos and diminuendos. There was one part near the end that had light short notes that sounded much less dramatic. There were so many other parts that I could not keep track of because it changed so much with tempo and dynamics. Because there was no clear form or easy to follow characteristic that pieced it all together, it was hard for me to enjoy it as a piece because I was stressing out about figuring out what I would be able to say about it in this critique. The only thing I can say truly is that the piece was extremely complex and beyond my musical ear to understand, but I guess it did evoke an emotion out of me because I was nearly panicked listening to