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Located in the USA
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- Florence Price
Whim Wham (1949)
- G Schirmer Inc (World)
ed. John Michael Cooper
Programme Note
According to many dictionaries, a "whim wham" is something bought or gotten on a whim — an impulse buy. And indeed, there is plenty of whimsy in Price's rollicking piano miniature presented here. Although the piece derives almost entirely from variants of the descending pentatonic scale C – A – G – E – D – C in the right hand and its ascending counterpart in the left hand (C – D – E – G – A – C), it is filled with lively syncopations, sometimes in combination with each other, and the middle section pulls toward two elements absent in the outer ones: the subdominant (F) in mm. 34-35 and the minor mode in mm. 35-37. The latter returns in the blue thirds in mm. 58-61. The interruption and fermata reinforce the whimsy before the prestissimo coda, which ends with an abruptness surpassed only by its charm.
— John Michael Cooper
— John Michael Cooper
Media
Jeanne-Minette Cilliers, piano