Keeping in the spirit of unedited, first-take, improvisation, I was inspired to record this after reading a poem of the same title written by Conrad Aiken. It’s obviously not a line-by-line transcription, but I hope any listeners take an opportunity to read it.

How is it that I am now so softly awakened

A continuation of my unaccompanied, unedited improvisations. I was feeling hurt today, so I wanted to play something that sounded the way I felt. The title is that of my favorite homonymous poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell—if still your orchards bear
Tart apples on the bough—
 
The early windfall under the tree,
And see the red fruit shine,
I cannot think your thoughts will be
Much different from mine.
 
Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadow of the trees,—
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,
 
A man no longer what he was,
Nor yet the thing he’d planned,
The chilly apple from the grass
Warmed by your living hand—
 
I think you will have need of tears;
I think they will not flow;
Supposing in ten thousand years
Men ache, as they do now.

———
To the few of you who have found these tracks and listened to them, thank you, it means a lot to me.

If Still Your Orchards Bear

Kabalevsky Concerto in C Major - Allegro Molto E Con Brio

A recording of my 2016 recital class performance. Nathaniel Hoffman - Violin, Alicia Basinska - Piano

Violin Concerto No.2, Op.22 - Henri Wieniawski

Thinking about you

Another unedited and unplanned improvisation as part of an ongoing project to record music which reflects my inner thoughts

Songs my mother taught me

Just a grad student who played too much violin in undergrad.