Tenement Rhapsody

Description

Piano 1, Piano 2 — TENEMENT RHAPSODY evokes three pictures of what New York City is to me. The first movement, Subway, is a jagged, jazzy dance in which the instruments bicker, bump into each other, and compete to be heard over one another. True to the piece’s character, the ideas came to me while jostling my way onto the subway at Union Square Station during a Winter rush hour.The second and third movements were inspired by life behind the door of our Lower East Side tenement apartment building. At Home offers the emotional center of the piece with its melodic and lush materials; and At Play features a diatonic passacaglia line, layered throughout the movement with playfully contrasting materials. The spirit of this final movement was inspired by life behind my apartment door, as I watched my 14-month-old baby exploring his universe with eager eyes and the swagger of a drunken sailor.TENEMENT RHAPSODY was commissioned by the New York State Music Teachers Association and is dedicated to Zelma Bodzin. Harberg’s TENEMENT RHAPSODY brings both the percussive and the expressive potential of two pianos to life in a work depicting her experience living in New York City. Subway is a jagged, jazzy dance full of virtuosic and contrapuntal interplay. At Home offers the emotional center with melodic and lush materials. At Play features a humorous energy inspired by life behind the composer’s apartment door as her 14-month-old explored his universe with eager eyes and the swagger of a drunken sailor. A recording of TENEMENT RHAPSODY can be found at https://youtu.be/EOTlYTKeZi8 .   "It's a perfect example of a voice that marries a lifetime of inhaling the world's piano literature, with jazz idioms and propulsive rhythm. Like the first movement, a whirlwind of Prokofieff-spiked colors peppered with chunky blue notes ... or the lyrical second movement, soaked in open mid-century American-harmonies-almost like a rippling reflection of Barber's Nocturne... or the energetic closing movement's homage to Mr. Gershwin." (Jonathan Newman)