Dries Berghman

Grad school at UC Berkeley has made it very difficult to write any new music. Other than doodling around on piano (I’ve learned movements from Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, some music by French-unknown Charles Koechlin, some Schumann, and some Chopin etudes) the only thing I’ve completed since leaving music school is a little bitonal Etude.

The plan is to write 10 short etudes, each focusing on a certain pianist technical difficulty. I’m planning on making them all short — basically, I’m planning on writing as long of a melody as I can, and leaving it at that.

Here is a PDF of the first one. A recording will follow soon.

Actually, two pieces of good news: first, public radio’s Performance Today had a little blurb about my recording of the Shostakovich F# Major Prelude & Fugue (Op. 87 No. 13) on the Tuesday, May 12 broadcast; they linked back to the recording here on my website.

And two: I was nominated today for the 2009 Austin Critics Table Award for Best Original Composition/Score. for my Archetypes I’m up against some heavyweights–not least of which Dan Welcher, whose Fifth Symphony recently premiered to rave reviews–but it’s an honor to be nominated to begin with!

New music: my Five Weeks, Five Waltzes, for piano solo. These were finished in (duh) five weeks (September-October 2008) at the rate of one per week. Recorded on Monday, February 23, in the studios of the UT Music School.
PDF score available upon request.

1.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

2.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

3.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

4.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

5.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Loads of new recordings! The first is from the premiere of my Archetypes, a three movement work for chamber orchestra I completed between September 2007 and May 2008.

The second is from my piano diploma recital at UT.

Archetypes

I. Prologue & Fugue

II. Veni Sancte Spiritus III. Domenico Alberti

Premiere, UT New Music Ensemble, Dan Welcher, conductor. December 2, 2008. Check out the Austin-American Statesman review here.

Recital 2008

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Bach-Busoni)

Prelude & Fugue in e-flat minor (Shostakovich)

Nun freut Euch (Bach-Busoni)

Prelude & Fugue in f-sharp major (Shostakovich)

Sonatine: Modere (Ravel)

Sonatine: Mouvement de menuet

Sonatine: Anime

Etudes 2, 3 and 4 (Sevenths, tritones, fourths) (Rautavaara)

Waltz op. 39 no. 16 (Brahms)

Diploma recital, December 1, 2008.

My “Archetypes,” a piece for chamber orchestra that was my main project during the last year, was premiered by Dan Welcher’s New Music Ensemble at UT. This was the review that appeared in the Austin-American Statesman:

The stand out was Dries Berghman’s Archetypes, a cerebral yet beautiful three-movement piece for chamber orchestra. Berghman took an elegiac theme and unwound it through different moods and styles moving from swirling gestures to jaunty stylings to pretty explosions of joyful sounds. Archetypes was artistically mature — remarkable that it came from a 22-year-old who has yet to graduate.