Children’s Songs

Nos.4, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

A selection of Children’s Songs by the American jazz pianist Chick Corea is introduced at this point in Joanna MacGregor’s programme because, she says, “they go extremely well after Schumann’s Kinderscenen: both are too hard for children to play and both are by adults writing about childhood. They are delightfully simple on the surface and sophisticated underneath.” Anyone who knows Corea as a pioneer of Fusion and the leader of a very loud funk band will be surprised by these piano pieces. The difference, she says, “is mind-boggling.” Dating from between 1971 and 1980, they are the first pieces Corea wrote for publication and, although metronome marks are given, there are no dynamic markings and the pianist is free to play them as he or she likes. Joanna MacGregor draws special attention to the “simple child-like left hand” of the first in the present selection, which is “very like a playground song but with a very poignant, melancholy touch to it.” After the slow Satie-inspired piece No.19, the last of them, a kind of moto perpetuo in 5/8, leads naturally towards the Bartok Sonata.