My Favorite Strings

I'm in preparation for what I hope will be an innovative September recital that will combine the traditional - performing composed music for people - and some kind of "twisted traditional" stuff that's appeared here on the blog. The latter will involve live versions of various MMmashups, but these two sides of me (the traditional, and the twisted traditional) came together last night, strangely and inevitably enough. The likely "traditional" repertoire for the recital will be Mendelssohn's wonderful D Minor Piano Trio, to be performed with my favorite strings, also known as my violinist daughter and cellist wife. The three of us debuted as "Montrieau" last September.

So, anyway, we sat down to read through the Mendelssohn last night, and as I started thinking through the music, a transitional thematic idea from the first movement passed through my head...and then segued unexpectedly (still in my head, of course) to something quite different. If you read this blog regularly, you'll not be surprised that I find this kind of thing fascinating. 

Once we'd finished playing, I ran upstairs and set myself the task of stitching the Mendelssohn together with this "other," and...well, that's really all there is to it. If you don't know the Mendelssohn, you can hear it here - the spot that linked my mind elsewhere begins in the violin just after the 2:25 mark, though you might want to start around the 2:00 mark to get more context:

And my new contribution to Western Civilization may be heard here:



I won't say much more other than to clarify that:

1. Yes, I had to transpose one of the recordings up a 4th, which...adds something.
2. As always seems to be the case with these incidental mashups, the two recordings seems to link up surprisingly well. I did not change the tempo of either one bit, and yet it almost sounds as if they were meant to go together.
3. Almost.