Life and Career of Robert Cunningham

The Hazards of Duke

I long believed that the program from my senior recital in college was lost, but I found a copy about a year ago while going through a box of old papers and clippings left by my mother, who died early in the morning of January 1, 2000.  The recital had been 30 years earlier, in April 1970 at Duke University.

I opened with the Prelude and Fugue in B Minor from the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.  The fugue is one of the composer’s most beautifully chromatic works.  It was followed by Beethoven’s famous sonata “Das Lebewohl,” Liszt’s concert etude “La Leggierezza,” and “Ondine” from Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit.

The program closed with a rendition of Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto, with my teacher (the late Loren Withers) playing a reduction of the orchestral part on a second piano.  Bartók wrote this work at the very end of his life (1945), and in fact left only sketches of the last seventeen bars, which were finalized by his student Tibor Serly.  The final section is marked Presto, and I remember that in a flash of spontaneous inspiration I took off at a very fast tempo, catching my teacher by surprise.  But I knew that Prof. Withers was a superb pianist who could rise to the occasion, and it worked out perfectly. Sometimes it pays to take a little risk. 🙂

I graduated less than two months later and entered Juilliard the following fall.

The recital was supposed to have been recorded, but the technician had some technical difficulties.  So I was left only with my memories of the experience.  But now that I have discovered this copy of the program, I know at least that the whole evening existed outside of my imagination!

The old Asbury Music Building on the Duke campus (below) was demolished about four years after I graduated and replaced by a new building.

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