Classical Music | Piano Music

Amy Beach

Dreaming  Play

Michelle Kim Piano

Recorded on 06/30/2004, uploaded on 05/04/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Dreaming    Amy Beach

A child prodigy who played with the Boston Symphony when she was 16, Amy Beach is the doyenne of female American composers and was America's first woman symphonist. Her symphonies and a concerto were performed by major orchestras in her lifetime. 

The poignant Dreaming is the third in a set of Four Sketches, op. 15, and is prefaced by an epigraph from Victor Hugo (You call me from the depths of a dream.).  Beach wrote the piece in 1892, and it opens with the feeling of a dream pulling us, hushed, hypnotic, at the edge of awareness.  The dream is represented by exotic harmonies, murmuring accompanimental figurations, and smooth, glassy lines.

Michelle Kim