The Inaugural Performance of "The Virtuous Virtuoso!"

On June 2, I gave the first performance of "The Virtuous Virtuoso," a conversational recital program of works taken from Jane Austen's collection of keyboard music. (One of these days, I'll get round to posting a description of the project under the link on my homepage!) The venue was the Clark Library in Los Angeles, a former private mansion turned library, with an absolutely stunning music room. The program included works of Haydn, Thomas Powell, Steibelt, Pleyel, Cramer, and Kotzwara. These were the composers known to Austen and other English amateur pianists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact, the final work on the program, Kotzwara's Battle of Prague, was the single most popular piece of keyboard music in England for fifty years! Most of us have never heard of it!

Of all the pieces on the program, the Battle of Prague got the most audience reaction by far. The work--which I gave a paper about in Montreal a few days later--is a musical depiction of a battle between Austrian and Prussian troops, complete with the sounds of cannons, flying bullets, trumpets, kettle drums, sword fighting, horses galloping, cries of the wounded, and a host of other sonic renditions of the battlefield. Most of these are labled in the score, and in performing the piece for the first time, I wanted to communicate the section headings to the audience. So, I solicited the help of Bruce Whiteman, head librarian at The Clark, and a musicologist, no less. I constructed about fifteen signs on posterboard, with text such as "The Attack" and "March of the Turks." As I performed the work, Bruce held the corresponding signs in the air for the audience to see. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but the piece was met with laughter from start to finish, a good sign, I think!

The recital includes a fair bit of talking between pieces, where I tell the audience about the accomplished woman in the late Georgian and Regency periods, and talk briefly about Jane Austen and her relationship to music. I also read a few of my favorite scenes from her novels, where piano playing is particularly important. I wasn't sure how engaging the conversational component would be, nor how smooth the transitions between playing and speaking would be, but I think everything turned out well. At the reception afterwards--a beautiful catered event that The Clark includes with all of their concerts--I met a number of enthusiastic audience members, with loads of ideas and responses. Their thoughts were invaluable, and I'm already at work incorporating their feedback into the program. It was refreshing to see how many of them mentioned the conversational recital format as something they particularly enjoy and respond to; I certainly feel the same way. And it was lovely to hear their enthusiasm for the project and for Austen in general, whose books I've been reading since junior high!