Life and Career of Robert Cunningham

Aspirations

In high school, I was the quintessential nerd, known chiefly as the school math whiz and as an intense chess devoté.  But the main focus of my life was already music, as reflected in these clippings from my senior year.  Curiously, the two clippings have the same date (from different newspapers, most likely), but reflect two different aspects of my musical life.  At that point I had not yet decided whether my major instrument would be piano or violin.  I was taking private lessons in both instruments, while playing violin in the school orchestra.

The left clipping is from a orchestra rehearsal for an upcoming performance of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor, where I would be the second soloist.  The photo shows the first soloist pointing something out to me in the music, but I think that was probably a pose set up by the photographer.

Occasionally I was called upon to play a piano part in the orchestra, but most of my piano endeavors were outside of school, in recitals or competitions.  That spring I won the piano division of a music contest with my performance of Prokofiev’s Suggestion Diabolique, a virtuosic work that lies outside my usual Romantic fare, but which is delightful in its own way and very appealing to audiences.  The clipping on the right shows me seated at the piano (naturally 🙂 ), along with four winners in the non-piano categories and an official from the club that sponsored the contest.

 

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