BEN PRICE’S PYP PLAYLIST

Posted on January 13, 2020

16-year-old oboist Ben Price is currently a member of PYP. They joined our organization in 2016, as part of our Conservatory Orchestra. Ben is a sophomore at Grant High School.

We asked them to share some of their favorite music in their PYP Playlist.

What is the first classical piece that you remember hearing?

My earliest memory of classical music is hearing Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz on a Disney Baby Einstein special. I didn’t realize what it actually was until many years later, and when I did I got upset because Disney changed part of it to simplify it.

What is your favorite piece that you’ve played in PYP?

My favorite musical experience that I’ve had in PYP was probably playing Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony as a celebration of his 100th birthday. When I first listened to the piece during the summer as part of my audition preparation, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. It was very aurally different than my usual styles I listened to. Upon more listening, it grew on me immensely. Something I didn’t realize until obtaining a score of the piece was how explicitly programmatic and cyclical of a work it is. Bernstein doesn’t just take a story and write music based on how it makes him feel; he takes the voices in the story and weaves them into the symphony. Jeremiah receives a prophecy that the Temple of Solomon is going The first movement, entitled Prophecy, opens with a foreboding and mysterious pulsing in the strings, followed by an austere horn solo. The entire movement is built around these two motifs, the melodic statement representing Jeremiah, trying to avoid the reality he must face, but the Prophecy is always present, eventually forcing him to confront the Temple of Solomon’s corruption.

The second movement, entitled Profanation, opens with a melodic statement that alternates meters rapidly, which represents the priests of Solomon, disputing Jeremiah’s claim that their corruption will lead to their downfall. The movement builds and builds to a climax, but after that, Bernstein takes a motif from the first movement and uses it here, except much faster. He represents Jeremiah’s arguing in this middle section, and at the end of the movement he juxtaposes the two themes, creating an aural effect that inspires discord and chaos. All of this he does so subtly that the listener hardly notices any bumps at all. The last movement, entitled Lamentation, is in essence a eulogy for the destroyed temple, with text taken from the Book of Lamentations. The true climax of the piece happens towards the end of this movement, and after that point the texture just gradually fades and fades into a somber sleep of nothingness.

Who is your favorite classical composer? Which piece of theirs is your favorite?

My favorite classical composer is probably Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. I have always found that his music has an inimitable quality of delight and sorrow simultaneously that makes it very very hard to play. My favorite composition of his is almost without a doubt, the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. One doesn’t even need to know the story of Romeo and Juliet to be intensely moved by this piece. It has sorrow, it has triumph, it has happiness, it has death, and it has longing. It covers the story of Romeo and Juliet, but in a more general sense it can be seen as a reflection on human life as a whole, because in the beginning and ending there is nothing.

Which piece most inspires you?

I am most inspired by the ninth and tenth symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovitch. They are both incredible pieces already, but coupled with the political circumstances that created them, it is astounding that they even exist. Shostakovitch wrote the ninth symphony as a joke, to stay on Josef Stalin’s good side and yet still get the last word. It starts out in a neoclassical style, but by the fourth bar all classical style is gone. By the end of the piece, the orchestra is on a one-way roller coaster to a hard truth of oppression.

The tenth symphony was his first symphonic work after Stalin’s death. In it, he fully describes what life under Stalin was like and how life without Stalin will never quite be the same as it was before. Each movement has a central theme; sorrow, torture, humiliation, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In this piece, he uses German transliterations of musical notes to literally sign his initials into the piece, a theme that has become known as the DSCH theme.

Which piece makes you laugh?

So many pieces come to mind, but two that stick out are both operatic overtures by Gioachino Rossini; La Scala di Seta and Guillame Tell. Despite containing one of the most feared oboe excerpts of all time (it’s on every single audition), La Scala di Seta is still an opera, meaning it still has an absolutely ridiculous plot that makes no sense in modern times, so you can’t help but laugh at it. The overture itself changes moods so quickly that it creates a sensation of pulling the rug out from under someone. The opening is slow and languid, with a solo oboe carrying the primary melody. After the recitative finishes on an unresolved seventh chord, the violins take off like a rocket with a very soft and goofy melody that the solo oboe then reiterates. The piece never stops moving until the very end.

The overture to William Tell is actually fairly unconventional for a Rossini overture; it has four distinct sections, and none of them steal material from the others. Of the piece’s four sections, (recitative, storm, pastorale, finale), the finale is the most famous and definitely the one that makes me laugh the most. The sudden jumps in dynamic and fast scale patterns, when done right, are impossible not to love and laugh at.

Which piece would you dance to?
A piece I could easily dance to is Johannes Brahms’s Variations on a theme of Haydn. Besides being the first major theme and variations work for orchestra, it is downright joyful. In a very Brahmsian style, it conveys a sense of formal dance throughout the work, some movements much more intense than others.

If you could have coffee with any composer, who would it be?
I would have to say Beethoven. Beethoven is somewhat tame in its grandeur compared to modern romanticism, but Beethoven invented the concept of musical grandeur. Nothing like the Eroica Symphony had ever been written and performed before. Beethoven’s music still follows a classical style, but he incorporates elements of romanticism to make his music much more sweeping. The magic of Beethoven for me is you can’t justify classifying him as fully Classical or fully Romantic.

If you could play any piece with PYP, what would it be?
Brahms’s Third Symphony is a piece I would love to play with PYP. Of his four symphonies, it is probably my favorite. From the very opening chords, the entire scope of the symphony is laid out. You can’t help but be washed along for the ride as he explores various hemiolas and rhythmic shifts. The third movement contains one of his most famous and beautiful melodies, for cello soli. The last movement starts in minor, fairly unusual for a symphony in major, but builds its way up to a hair raising climax in major. The piece ends with an echo of the very first measure of the symphony, accompanied by effervescent woodwind chords, reminiscent of falling asleep.