Andrew Infanti • Listen to Percy Grainger

listen

Percy Grainger

Live performances by Andrew Infanti

Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was an Australian born, German educated, English bred, American musician. His excentric personality and adventurous life shine through all his artistic creations.

Andrew Infanti is particularly fond of playing Grainger’s most outrageously sentimental works like Mock Morris, Ramble on Love, or Blithe Bells and Colonial Song (continue reading …)

I.Blithe Bells II.Colonial Song

Grainger, pianist and composer

Percy Grainger was an exceptional pianist but openly disliked his instrument. When he composed for the keyboard, he most often considered the result an arrangement — most of his scores mention when he “dished up” the work for piano.

The composer was quite insistant upon the printing of his own program notes in any concert performance of his works. They are faithfully reproduced below.

Blithe Bells (1931)

A piece for two pianos performed live by Andrew Infanti and Belinda Chen Yokuş.

A free ramble by Percy Aldridge Grainger on Bach’s aria “Sheep may graze in safety when a goodly shepherd watches o'er them” (from the Secular Cantata “Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd”). The ramble is colored by the thought that Bach, in writing the melody in thirds that opens and closes the number, may have aimed at giving a hint of the sound of sheep bells.

Colonial Song (Sentimentals, No. 1, 1912)

A work for solo piano performed live by Andrew Infanti.

In his piece the composer has wished to express feelings aroused by thoughts of the scenery and people of his native land, Australia. It is dedicated to the composer’s mother.

Robert Helps and Percy Grainger

listen and read also

From the Auditorium of the Robert Helps Web Monument:

Pianist Robert Helps’ two live performances of other pieces by Percy Grainger — Irish Tune from County Derry and Fauré’s Nell, op. 18 no. 1.

“ Pianist who hated the piano, composer juxtaposing traditional concepts of folk music with the most daring explorations heroic, Nietzschean (almost always an abusive word) figure who also adored parlor music and homemade towel clothing, dedicated Sadomasochist entremetteur, practician, and nude photographer in the 1920’s – Percy Grainger remains a figure whose fascination is nearly impossible to resist. Helps did not resist. He admired the full gamut from the composer’s delightful, but nearly unplayable fripperies such as “Handel in the Strand” to his gorgeous song transcriptions (that of Nell was in Helps’ permanent repertoire).

Grainger’s constant desire to distance himself from his youthful virtuoso career lent him a iconoclastic, fearless approach to the keyboard, which produced some amazing results – cluster glissandi, sadistic fingerings whose aim is a particular timbral effect, harmonics, orchestral tremolandi, incessant suggestions for sostenuto pedal use, pronounced and notated chord voicings, etc. Helps borrowed from Grainger one of his most touching and effective concert encores – the Irish Tune from County Derry, vulgarly known as “Danny Boy.” The extreme simplicity of this folk-melody setting exudes an warmth and humanity that was truly heart-rending in Helps’ hands. Kinkiness aside (but always front and center for the biographer!), convincing parallels could be made between these composers’ lives: Grainger’s boundless appetite for life beyond the confines of “correct” musical society matched Helps’ legendary eccentric personality and infectious humor, adored and admired by all who came in contact with him.

In his youth, Helps actually met Grainger – the Australian genius made a detour into Ridgewood, New Jersey during a concert tour. Helps had the opportunity to play one of Grainger’s transcriptions with the eccentric maestro for 2 pianos, 6 hands – an oddity which clearly impressed the young Helps : he would compose a work for this same distribution and scoring fifty years later! (Berceuse - 1996) Helps also recounts a private audience where he played for Grainger the newly composed Second Sonata by Roger Sessions (Helps’ teacher at the time). Grainger was puzzled by the dissonant work and commented, apparently without a trace of malice, “I don’t understand why you don’t either use no pedal at all, or simply put the pedal down at the beginning and never lift it again...” Such extreme solutions are the very least we could expect from Grainger. ”