# In the Afternoon - for Piano



## pkoi

Here's a small character piece, which is the first song in my collection of three easy pieces for the piano. It's a simple piece with influences from Satie, Bartok's mikrokosmos, Debussy, early Cage etc. It was comissioned by my colleague at the music school I work in. It's meant to be performed by an intermediate pianist, hence the simple textures. Here it is performed by a professional pianist as a demo. Next weekend I'll upload the rest of the parts, as we record them then.


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https://soundcloud.com/pekka-koivisto%2Fin-the-afternoon


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## pkoi

And here's the second part. I didn't get the third one ready yet, I will finish it sometime in the near future. This one's titled as "In a Dream". It's a bit Messiaen'ish and maybe Debussian but easy to play. Again performed by a professional pianist.


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https://soundcloud.com/pekka-koivisto%2Fin-a-dream

P.S. If you listen carefully, You'll hear a soprano singing in the very background in some of the quiet parts. This is because I recorded it in a classroom, and there was a soprano rehearsing in the next one.


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## pkoi

And here's the next one. I decided to make it a 4 piece collection, the last one is being recorded next saturday.

The one behind this link, is called "Farewell". It's meant to be the final movement of the work and explores Schumann'ish soundscapes.


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https://soundcloud.com/pekka-koivisto%2Ffarewell


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## mediumaevum

I really liked the third piece. Not so much the first piece, which I thought sounded too much like the same melody repeated too much.

The second piece I liked too, but not so much as the third piece.

Could you eventually combine with some high violin counterpoint (in the first piece)?


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## Larkenfield

I hear the French influences the most and the first is quite lovely. The second has some subtle harmonies that didn’t sounded exactly correct but I liked overall. The third didn’t seem to go with the first two, perhaps because it didn’t have the same French flavor and seemed to be written in more of a classical style. The first two go together quite nicely. Just one man’s opinion here, but they might benefit from a little bit more work.


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## pkoi

Thanks for your comments mediumaevum and Larkenfield!

Larkenfield, it is true that the third one differs from the first two. When I was comissioned this set of pieces, I didn't have any specific plan on making it a unified set of works, and thus I didn't worry too much on them being unified in sound. The idea was just to make a collection of short songs for intermediate pianist, so that they would have new repertoire. The process of composing these has been very intuitive, and all of them have been composed in couple of hours. This is what gives them the rough and perhaps a bit unfinished character. I usually compose in a post-tonal/contemporary style, and in these works I wanted to clearly depart from that, and experiment in tonal/modal-style. I would say, it has been a very relaxing experience! It's nice to do something different for a change.

The second song, of course, is different from the rest, since it was made in a post-tonal manner. It uses Messiaen's third mode, which creates these kind of familiar-but-strange harmonies.

Mediumaevum, I'm glad you like the third piece. I was inspired by some of Schumann's works in that, perhaps most notably the "Abschied" from Waldszenen, hence the name of my piece. You mention combining the first piece with high violin counterpoint; do you mean to combine it with an actual violin or with violin's register? If combining with an actual violin, I would probably not, since these are meant for pianists only.

When I finish the fourth song for this collection, I will post the sheet music, in case someone would like to play them.


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## pkoi

And here's the third movement as promised. It's a kind of quasi-scherzo, and it's textures are reminiscent of those of Bartok's, Shostakovich's, and Prokofjiev's.


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https://soundcloud.com/pekka-koivisto%2Fscherzetto


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