David Berends
Fifteen Exceptions for Piano
David Berends was born in Baltimore, Maryland in December of 1956. He began studying piano at age six, and was shortly thereafter enrolled at the preparatory department at the Peabody Conservatory, graduating with honors in May of 1973. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1978 in a curriculum emphasizing electronic and computer-generated music. Mr. Berends has appeared numerous times on radio and television in the Baltimore and Princeton areas, and has performed with artists ranging from jazz guitar innovator Stanley Jordan while at Princeton to Rock and Roll pioneer Chuck Berry during his thirty years behind the keyboard. He has written scores of songs, small ensemble works, and piano pieces, and is presently working on his first concerto for piano and orchestra. Mr. Berends presently resides in Pennington, New Jersey with his wife Mary Pat and two small children.
Fifteen Exceptions for Piano is a collection of David Berends' original solo piano work containing pieces and arrangements written between 1978 and 1991. Mr. Berends has provided the following thoughts about his compositions.
Fifteen Exceptions for Piano
I envision a dreary wet autumn day, crowds lining both sides of the street, everyone wishing that they didn't have to be there to watch the procession for their beloved fallen hero. The music speaks of grandeur and glory, but it is a deep sadness which is felt in the hearts of the onlookers. Sadness and confusion why did this have to happen? Fanfare in the Rain tries to capture these complex emotions in a short piece for piano. My Fanfare thus is not program music for such a procession; instead it is perhaps program music for the memory of such a procession.
Take a note, go up one step, down two steps, up three steps, down four steps, and so on, and you have the melodic basis for the Prelude and Allegro. Although the Allegro's first section's main theme is a variation of this recipe, in the middle section is followed to a tee. To me this piece is the pianistic equivalent of a fiddler's reel rapid-fire broken chord notes forming a good ol' American melody. Good ol' American fun!
The five pieces A Perfect Day for Bananafish, In my world, The Carousel, After the Storm, and I sit beside the fire and think form a little suite of songs without words. Two of them, A Perfect Day for Bananafish and I sit beside the fire and think, were inspired by fictional works, specifically J.D. Salinger's tragic short story and J.R.R. Tolkien's wonderful little poem from The Lord of the Rings. But they are all just simple little songs for the piano to sing and for the listener to enjoy.
When I'm feeling introspective rather than sit and brood, I will often improvise at the piano. Introspection in A is both a vehicle for and the result of such improvisation. Instrumental music is often used as a sonic backdrop for such thinking. So please listen and reflect.
Imagine a little boy, say eight, nine years old, in a strange place playing and pretending by himself, having fun without being aware of it. Next thing you know he's curiously wandering off this way and that, further away from where he started, until he finds himself surrounded by a great big unknown world. Yes, he'll eventually find his way back. But not until he discovers quite a few interesting people, things and places, including a street festival, a great valley, and a rollicking beer hall. Very simply, this piece is the soundtrack for this little boy's adventure. The little boy's name for this adventure just happens to be Bobo (with apologies to Giuseppe Tornatore).
In the Nocturne I have tried to capture musically the struggle we all have occasionally to make it through a long, lonesome night (perhaps the piece would be better entitled Insomnia). And like so many tortuous nights, it ends with the joyous dawn and the optimistic realization that things aren't so bad after all (insomnia, you know, isn't worth losing sleep over).
She first appears simply and beautifully. She slowly but surely wins you over, and then she tears your heart apart. The Temptress is the only piece I've included here which I feel works better as an orchestrated work, but like Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, it was first written for piano, and it will thus be first heard on piano.
Dancing in the Moonlight is a celebration of night in the forest. In the piece's score the first thematic statement is subtitled "The sun goes down"; the second, "The moon comes out:; and the third, "The creatures of the day go off to sleep" (that means you and me). The frolicking development section is then subtitled, "The creatures of the night emerge." And then the fun begins!
About two weeks before this album's final recording session I was improvising at the piano one morning (i.e. "banging away") when the theme used in Sketch came to me. Now normally when a theme or idea comes to me I jot it down in my notebook immediately before it evaporates, and then let it age for several weeks or months before taking it out and using it in a piece. But with this theme a shortness of time forced me to try something different the next morning I generated a couple of simple variations on the theme, put them all together, and called it a piece. It started as a rough sketch of something which could have grown into a grander piece, but a shortness of time (and maybe a touch of good sense) kept me from pursuing it. So here it is, a prelude to Watermusic.
Starting as a trickle and growing successively into a rivulet, a stream, and finally a river emptying out into a great bay is how I imagine the beginning of Watermusic. And like a good PBS documentary we then see all of the creatures of the bay and its surrounding woodlands happily going about their business. But Watermusic is more than just the music from an imaginary public TV show it is my attempt to portray musically all of the different forms that water takes in our world. From the dripping of the thawing pine trees in early spring to the massive power of the ocean waves, from the bubbling of a brook to the roar of the falls, then central theme here is water in its liquid form. I wrote this piece in early 1991 right after the close-together deaths of two of my heroes, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. So if you hear an undue amount of either one's influence, you'll know why. This is an American piece, written about America's waters, inspired by two of America's finest.
All of the music herein exists in published form and is available through Ingleside Music, P.O. Box 320, Pennington, NJ 08534.
All material composed, performed, recorded, and edited by David Berends.
Mastered by Peter Humphries at Masterwork Recording, Philadelphia, PA with assistance from William Berends.
Cover Art: Susan Stults Ewart
Fifteen Exceptions for Piano
Fanfare in the Rain (4:36)
A Perfect Day for Bananafish (2:23)
I sit beside the fire and think (2:45)
Introspection in A (5:26)
Dancing in the Moonlight (4:45)
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