Unusual title, ensemble name, performer clothing, and graphics aside, this is a straightforward recital of four-hand piano music. True, it's quite inventive. The Mosh Pit title refers to the fact that the music on the program, all of it American, refers to popular dance rhythms. The exploration of dance is not in fact carried forward to the punk era, so nobody would have been doing any moshing to the rhythms employed here. But the range of references is impressive, running from European forms in John Corigliano's Gazebo ...
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Unusual title, ensemble name, performer clothing, and graphics aside, this is a straightforward recital of four-hand piano music. True, it's quite inventive. The Mosh Pit title refers to the fact that the music on the program, all of it American, refers to popular dance rhythms. The exploration of dance is not in fact carried forward to the punk era, so nobody would have been doing any moshing to the rhythms employed here. But the range of references is impressive, running from European forms in John Corigliano's Gazebo Dances and Latin rhythms in Gershwin's Cuban Overture (arranged for piano four-hands by the composer) to the turn-of-the-20th-century dances in Samuel Barber's Souvenirs, Op. 28, to modern jazz, boogie, and rock in the final two works on the program, Allen Shawn's Three Dance Portraits and Paul Schoenfeld's Five Days from the Life of a Manic-Depressive. The titles might not suggest it, but these are hugely entertaining works. The Jimi Hendrix-like finale of Three Dance Portraits matches...
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