Life and Career of Robert Cunningham

The First Recital

The newspaper clipping (at left below), which I believe is from the Raleigh News and Observer, dates from my senior year in high school.  It announced my senior piano recital, to be held on April 20, 1966 at Meredith College, where my teacher James Clyburn was on the piano faculty.  That was my first full-length solo recital, to be followed by many others over the next half century.  It went very well, although I do not have any recording of it.  But a couple of years ago I discovered that my parents (now long deceased) had saved a copy of the program, which is how I know the exact date.

The program included Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B-Flat Major, Beethoven’s Sonata in C Major (op. 10/2), and the Ravel Sonatine, along with shorter works by Bach, Chopin, Tansman, Brahms, and Prokofieff.  In later years I would continue to perform the Bach partita, both Chopin works, and the Prokofieff.

A quarter century later, on October 5, 1992, I returned to Meredith to perform another concert.  As a tribute to my former teacher, I included this performance of Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude, which I had also played in the 1966 program.

I also have a recording of one of my later performances of the Prokofieff piece (Suggestion Diabolique), but unfortunately I cannot publish it for copyright reasons.  But in 2017 I made this recording of the Chopin Nocturne in E-flat, op. 9/2, and as I was playing it memories of that long-ago 1966 recital still floated through my mind.

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