Life and Career of Robert Cunningham

The Modest Beginning

In the early 1980s, after I took up composition and needed a way to present my music to others, I began putting on musical soirées in my home. Over the years, the audiences for these affairs grew until I was eventually obliged to alternate them with concert-hall recitals for the larger public. I still have this typewritten program from what I believe was the very earliest of these soirées, apparently dating from 1981.

This initial event was held in my apartment of the time, with about a dozen or so friends and family members in attendance. It was the first time I had put on any kind of prepared performance since leaving Juilliard about ten years earlier. The program, as you can see, included selections from Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt, along with the challenging “Ondine” from Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. I was still working on my first significant composition, the Piano Sonata No. 1, and I included its first movement (Allegro moderato) just after the intermission.

I don’t think I appreciated at the time just what a momentous turn my life was taking!

By the way, over the years that followed I produced recordings of five of the works on the program, so you can capture some of the musical flavor of the program today:

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