David S. Lefkowitz (US) – Bagatelle
David S. Lefkowitz about his piano piece “Bagatelle”:
“The last movement of the last composition for solo piano that Beethoven saw through to publication is peculiar. The brief, framing fast sections seemingly unrelated to the larger, slower middle section; the frequent three-bar phrases; and the prolonged pause on a low submediant pedal nearly precisely at the geographic middle of the piece all contribute to the surprising sound of this Bagatelle. I attempted to capture those features, but using an arithmetic mode that, in its “precipitando” potential, helps knit the outer sections with the middle.”
Piano piece “Bagatelle” – in concert:
David S. Lefkowitz (*1964)
Composer, music theorist, and professor David S. Lefkowitz holds degrees in music composition from Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and Eastman. He has won international acclaim, having works performed in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Israel, and Egypt. He has won national and international competitions, including the Fukui Harp Music Awards Competition (twice), and ASCAP Young Composers Competition. In addition, he has won prizes and recognition from NACUSA, the Guild of Temple Musicians, Chicago Civic Orchestra, Washington International Competition, Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize, the ALEA III International Competition, and Gaudeamus Music Week. Recent commissions include works for the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Suzana Bartal, Irina Donskaia of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Grace Cloutier of the Hartford Conservatory, the Sibelius Piano Trio, and the Russian String Orchestra (Chamber Orchestra Kremlin), Misha Rachlevsky, director. His CD Harp’s Desire, containing about 80 minutes of his music for harp, was recently released on Albany Records, and his Ruminations for the Sibelius Piano Trio was recently released on Yarlung Records.
As a music theorist Dr. Lefkowitz has researched “meta-theoretical” issues such as the process of segmentation and the internal structure of set-classes, Schoenberg’s piano music and has written two textbooks: Music Theory: Syntax, Function, and Form and Analysis of Post-Tonal Music: A Parametric Approach.