Chamber Concerto

for Piano and Small Orchestra

or Piano, Strings, and Timpani; or Piano Quintet

First Edition, April 18--July 18, 2003; 2nd movement added March 15--April 25 2013.
Duration: about 24 minutes Photo above: premiere

for *1) Piano and Small Orchestra Score (PDF) Orchestral Parts Piano part Cover

or *2) Piano , String Orchestra and Timpani Score String Orchestra Parts Piano part Cover

or 3) Piano and String Quartet Score String Parts Piano part Cover

The second movement is a modern treatment of Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins, by way of J. S. Bach's Concerto for Four Harpsichords. Recording is from Feb. 18 2014 concert of the piano quintet version. Thomas Warburton, piano; Eric Pritchard, Mary Kay Robinson, violins; David Marschall, viola; Virginia Hudson, cello
video (YouTube)

I. First Movement: Allegro: Presto: Allegro

                      [6:56] MP3 recording
II. Something Old, Something New
        Allegro Vivaldi    [5:08]    MP3 recording
III. Ram Nam: Largo, Adagio Ram Nam [6:32] MP3recording
IV. Rondo Recidivisto   [5:39]     MP3 recording

     Most of the composition in 2003 was done in Ann Arbor Michigan using the facilities of the Music School of the University of Michigan, while studying physics. The piano part in the first and some of the third movement comes from the "Great American Piano Concerto" of 1984 which has been withdrawn. Some ideas from the first concerto also are in the last movement of the Chamber Concerto. The second movement is a new arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins via J. S. Bach’s arrangement for four harpsichords.
      The original versions of this concerto are for piano, string orchestra, and timpani, and also for piano quintet. In March 2007, a call came from Dorothy Kitchen to arrange the work for the forces of the Duke University String School, which add to the strings and timpani a flute, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, and two horns. They performed the first movement in 2007. The first edition of the string orchestra version was premiered by Robert Ian Winstin and the Virginia Youth Orchestra in 2008. I have been careful to keep the technical demands within the reach of good amateur orchestras.
      In August 2022 I made a new improved edition of all the scores and parts; now all but the version for small orchestra score is on letter-size paper. All documents are PDF files and are to be printed front and back.

Musician Biographies

Virginia Ewing Hudson teaches cello and related subjects at Meredith College and has taught Music Appreciation at St. Augustine College. She co-directs youth programs for both the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle and is director of Meredith's Live Oak Chamber Music Camp.
Hudson has appeared as soloist with The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, The Raleigh Civic Symphony and The Blue Lake Festival Orchestra. She has performed as a chamber musician with The Mallarme and Meredith Chamber Players and is a member of the Triangle Quartet. Hudson has served as principal cello for The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, The Opera Company of NC, The Greensboro Symphony, The Raleigh Symphony, The Raleigh Civic Symphony, The Blue Lake Festival Orchestra and The International Music Program. She has also performed with the NC Symphony. Hudson has studied cello with such luminaries as Robert Marsh, Lev Aronson, Paul Olefsky and Colin Carr and chamber music with Josef Gingold and Dan Welcher. She has been heard on radio broadcasts, PBS, and various record labels.

David Marschall was a member of the North Carolina Symphony beginning in 1987, and was was appointed Associate Principal Viola in 2007. Since 1990, he spent his summers playing in the orchestra of the Santa Fe Opera. David was a member of the chamber ensemble Quercus, and was a member of New Music Raleigh, an ensemble dedicated to the music of living composers. He performed on Bill Robinson’s 2012 concert at Duke, and the 2013 concert at Meredith College.

David has also served as Principal Viola for the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and the Columbus Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra. He was a member of the New Orleans Symphony, the Innsbruck (Austria) Symphony, the Des Moines Metro Opera, and the Colorado Philharmonic. A native of Columbus, Ohio, David studied first at Ohio State, and he received his Master's degree from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Karen Tuttle. His viola was made in 2009 by Grubaugh and Seifert of California. David's wife, Amy, teaches German and English at Raleigh Charter High School, and they have two sons, Philip and Owen.

Eric Pritchard has taught violin and served as the First Violinist of the Ciompi Quartet at Duke University since 1995. Formerly First Violinist of the Alexander and Oxford Quartets, Mr. Pritchard has taught at Miami University, San Francisco State University, City University of New York, and the NC School of the Arts. He was winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Award in Violin as well as the first prize winer at the London International String Quartet Competition and the Coleman and Fischoff national chamber music competitions. He has performed widely as a recitalist and as soloist with the Boston Pops and orchestras in Europe and South America. His major teachers were Eric Rosenblith, Josef Gingold, Ivan Galamian and Isadore Tinkleman and he holds degrees from Indiana University and the Juilliard School.

Mary Kay Robinson, violinist, is a 1968 graduate of the Juilliard School, where she studied with Dorothy DeLay and Ivan Galamian. She studied chamber music with Felix Galimir, Donald Weilerstein, Josef Gingold and members of the Guarneri String Quartet. She furthered her education with studies with Glenn Dicterow, Gregory Fulkerson and Gerald Beal. Her first job after graduation was as violin instructor at the University of Tennessee, in her hometown of Knoxville, where she filled in for her former teacher, William Starr, who was on sabbatical in Japan. She was a member of the University of Tennessee String Quartet and later held a similar position in the University of Maryland String Quartet.

She has toured with Solisti New York and spent many summers playing with the OK Mozart Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, and Bellingham Festival of Music. In 2008 she taught at Duke University as well as maintaining a private studio. Also that year, she performed Bill Robinson’s Sonata for Solo Violin #4 at Brevard, NC. She performed on Bill Robinson’s 2012 concert at Duke. Bill has composed two pieces for her to play with her husband oboist Joseph Robinson.

Tom Warburton retired in May of 2005 after 36 years on the musicology faculty at the University of North Carolina. There he taught a variety of courses, both in music history and music theory; he also received two teaching awards. He has published on a variety of topics, several in recent years concerning music of the United States during the twentieth century. For three years he was organist at Trinity United Methodist Church in Durham and for seven years he served as Minister of Music at First Presbyterian Church, where he conducted the Adult and Handbell Choirs.