Sonata Secrets

Pianist Henrik Kilhamn goes through Brahms Intermezzo in E major, no. 6 from Op. 116, with discussions of meter dispacement, structural reconfiguration and emotional transformation throughout the piece. Video: https://youtu.be/Xjlvl5b4ayo

Pianist Henrik Kilhamn looks at Yiruma's famous "River Flows In You", a tender but catchy instrumental pop song, associated with the Twilight franchise but not actually used in the movie. Video: https://youtu.be/OqgmQEBC75M

Joe Hisaishi is known for his scores to Studio Ghibli films, like this spacious theme from Spirited Away. It features quartal harmonies with a slightly eerie vibe to start with, but settles after a while into a perfect lounge piece. There are a few different official versions with Hisiashi himself, and in this video we see where they differ. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/_tR...

Grieg summons an army of trolls, who apparently become dwarfs in English, in this highly effective piano piece! With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/y9fPd3zOYPQ

Dario Marionelli composed the score to the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, and the opening track Dawn is a nice piano piece in its own right that captures the air of classy salons. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/AsgXmgnpcGI

We look closely at the details of this colorful creation and find typical Debussy devices everywhere: pentatonic and whole-tone vibes, extended dominants, sharp contrasts, and even some polytonality! VIdeo: https://youtu.be/jEfo70SY4BM

Another gem from Grieg's Lyric pieces Op. 12, known as either "Elfin dance" or "Fairy dance". The Scandinavian elves are actually more like fairies or sprites than fantasy elves, and this music captures their short but energetic dance show succinctly! Video: https://youtu.be/6rEWZVMIC3k

The opening music of the film Forrest Gump (1994) is a lovely piano tune in almost total syncopation and with graceful lightness. In this video we look closer at the musical material. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/NFtNL85r0Fc

Rachmaninoff took Kreisler's beloved Liebesleid for violin and turned it into a virtuosic piano showpiece full of crunchy chromaticism and awkward chords :) With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/EAKBxLgu560

We look closer at Yann Tiersen's (first) waltz for Amélie to see how he crafts four rounds of beautiful piano textures based on the same chords. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/-jQSSoEygBE

Yann Tiersen wrote one of the most memorable pianistic scores for the French film "Amélie" in 2001. Using only simple means of carefully crafted melodic ideas over repeated textures makes this Comptine a modern, minimalist classic. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/M41GA-rxkHQ

The Sugar Plum Fairy is sneaking around in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker with the help of celeste bells and staccato chords, but it all works fine to play on a piano too after the composer's own arrangement. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/X-J7eP-RLMM

Revered as one of the most powerful and difficult etudes of the romantic repertoire, Scriabin's in D-sharp minor is impressively cohesive, with every phrase leading seamlessly over to the next over vast arpeggios, bass pedal points and poignant harmonic moves. Analysis with pianist Henrik Kilhamn. (Apologies for the audio quality - somehow my external audio setup didn't record the analysis part so...

No. 6 is Debussy's first book of Preludes is called "Des pas sur la neige" or "Footsteps in the Snow", and paints a poetic picture with repeating rhythms and colorful chords, all the time while looking for a way forward. It's hard to put this type of evocative art into exact words, but we can nevertheless look closer at the musical material to see a bit more of what's going on. With pianist Henrik...

Edward Elgar wrote his famous "Salut d'Amour" as an engagement present to his fiancée Alice Caroline Robert. The original conception of the music was probably for violin and piano, but that didn't stop Elgar from writing a version for piano solo: a beautiful song without words and a great encore. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/JDJdgQ3G-o4

My take on the newly discovered Chopin (?) Waltz in A minor (Morgan Library, 2024) Video: https://youtu.be/BhIyT79Y_CI

This is one of the most interesting piano sonatas of the early 20th century. Scriabin pushes the boundaries both in musical expression, harmonic coherence and structural integration in this amazing work, so full of life and creative spirit. It's also nice to be able to do a substantial analysis play-through when I have the music in my hands, since I've just recorded it for my upcoming solo album S...

This is a great piece for beginners who have started to play separately with the hands. Robert Schumann wrote the whole "Album for the Young" Op. 68 for his three daughters to learn piano properly, and still to this day it's a great educational resource for getting started with a romantic conception of piano playing. Henrik Kilhamn takes you through the short piece in this video. Update dec 2024:...

This poignant prelude from Chopin's set of Op. 28 is one page and about 2,5 minutes long. That's almost the length of a modern pop song, but it still contains more interesting musical ideas than most in that genre. It's a great piece for intermediate players, and here I give some playing tips before going through the piece again to inspect those ideas further. Pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Update dec 20...

Henrik Kilhamn presents this lesser known Funeral March from a romantic piano sonata, by a composer who admired Chopin but went on to write his own name in music history as well. His first sonata, Op. 6, ends with this very solemn but gripping statement after major struggles of previous movements, marking it a tragedy of great proportion. Can you guess the composer? Video: https://youtu.be/icrkAmN...

In this video we'll look up the beautiful musical number "Married Life" from the Disney/Pixar movie Up (2009), scored by Michael Giacchino. With pianist Henrik Kilhamn. Video: https://youtu.be/yDglADz8GlA Sheet Music (My arrangement): https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1551158/Product.aspx

Pianist Henrik Kilhamn points out five things about this iconic theme song written by Danny Elfman. Video: https://youtu.be/n8Jo48PtRsU Sheet music (My arrangement): https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1550901/Product.aspx

This is a real showstopper of a piano piece, composed by a young and ambitious Schubert in 1822. The seed of much of the work's material comes from the song "The Wanderer" he had written earlier; he used a melody for variations in the slow second movement and kept the same rhythm for the other fast movements too! Maybe there it feels more like running than wandering, but it's rea...

This is a valuable major Liszt work from his first book of "Years of Pilgrimage". It's quite thoughtful and introverted music, dealing with psychological matter from pioneer romantic figure Senancour's novel Obermann about a young man goes out in nature to seek answers to life's hard questions. But over the span of this 14 mins long musical essay, you also see the amazing vie...

Scriabin's epic sonata no. 3 is one of only two with a more classical approach of four movements, before he ventured further into more integrated forms. However, you can already here savour everything that makes Scriabin great - soaring melodies, expansive textures over the whole piano, tightly knit counterpoint with individual voices and ever-unfolding chromaticism to name a few important one...