Cann Piano Performance Analysis

I attended Michelle Cann’s piano performance in Wellin yesterday, November 13th. It was a 6 part performance that spanned multiple works from various famous composers such as Fredric Chopin and Geroge Gershwin and was a terrific display of Cann’s technical ability and ability to connect emotionally with the pieces she is playing. There were several interesting pieces during the performance, but two pieces I found particularly interesting and engaging was the piano suite created specifically for Cann by Michael Leibowitz and the concert Arabesque on themes from On the Beautiful Blue Danube by Andrei Schulz-Evler. Both of these works were roughly 10-15 minutes a piece and were a terrific testament to Cann’s overall style as a pianist and her
The piece was written specifically for Cann by Philadelphia composer Michael Leibowitz after the two worked together in a Teach for America type program for music education. The suite consists of three movements with very distinctive qualities. Cann delineated the movements dramatically, as she would take a long pause and turn her sheet music as one movement transitioned into another. The first movement was very repetitive, as Cann layered the same harmonies and repeated them rapidly in a serialism that Cann likened to the work of Phillip Glass. It has a quick tempo that seems like an ever-flowing stream of arpeggios where no two notes are ever played simultaneously. The second movement was somehow more hectic and had a quicker tempo than the first. It was an exercise in perpetual motion where it always seemed to be moving forward and not really repeating anything in the process. Leibowitz called the second movement the toccata, which is a musical composition that I
Strauss originally wrote the piece for an orchestra and male chorus and Shulz-Evler took out the male chorus and replaced it with piano bravura that requires great technical skill and again was a testament to Cann’s ability. The piece has all of the classic elements of the original piece but is backed up by a rambling series of notes that seem to fill all of the available breathing room of the original progression. It seemed as if one of her hands was playing the original piece, while the other set off to hit all of the difficult runs and transitions that filled in all of the gaps. The second half of the piece was considerably more relaxed then the first as the tempo slowed down and it seemed like the notes were given a little more time to resonate, but even then there was constant background patterns that filled in almost all of the space. It also seemed at times that the background work was playing in dissonance with the standard chords of the original piece, which I found very interesting. It was an impressive and different rendering of a classic piece that was draped in technical ability and ornamentation. To me, it seemed as if the piece was a little too crowded and hectic, and removed the simplicity that made the original a masterpiece. I understand that this piece was developed to replace the liveliness of a male chorus, and was designed