Hal Grossman and Jeffrey Gilliam brought not one, not two, but three pieces to IPR's Studio A that have never been performed there before.
The two are working on an album together, and each of the three pieces they performed will receive their debut recording on the new album.
The album will be Grossman's first. "This is a new adventure for me," he said. "Preparing for this has been very different than preparing for a recital."
One piece, called "Stages," was composed by Interlochen's own Steve Larson.
"I love it," Grossman said of Larson's piece. "It's so easy to listen to." He said there are a lot of things in the piece that are just like Larson: "There's something very organic about the way he composes and the way he is, and because Steve was a pianist for ballet for so many years, there's a lot of dance elements in the piece."
Grossman also performed "When Our Home is Gone," a solo piece by composer Noam Faingold whose evocative title means something other than what you might expect.
Finally, Grossman and Gilliam performed a movement from Bernard Heiden's Violin Sonata.
Grossman stumbled across the Heiden (pronounced the same as Haydn) sonata in a music store and fell in love with it. "It's one of those gems that kind of got lost in the shuffle in the world of recording violinists," he said.
Music performed (all Studio A premieres)
Steve Larson, Stages
Noam Faingold, When Our Home is Gone
Bernard Heiden, Violin sonata (movement 2)
Stefan Wiebe engineered this edition of Studio A.
