Joyful Play is the first movement of the On the Playground violin concerto for strings that played at Lincoln Center. I began the task of transcribing the work for piano in the spring of 2005. I quickly realized that the work could not be translated by a single pianist. I also realized that it would not get performed very often as a work for two pianos, so I set it for one piano, two players (referred to as 'piano and four hands' in the literature ). Other work came up back then and I put it away until a couple of months back.

I finished the transcription this morning.

The biggest challenge is knowing 1) how much to remove and retain the spirit of the music because four hands cannot keep up with the counterpoint in the original work 2) how to keep hands colliding 3) how to make it pianistic 4) how to make it playable and lastly, 5) how to make it readable.

My wife's best reading piano student, Katie Lechner, an Oviedo High School senior and my 12 year old son Brendon will give it it's initial read this coming Saturday. This will be a proofreading session. If all goes well and I've done my work well, they will have the option of working it up for it's premiere. If not, I'll go back to the 'drawing board' and make the necessary fixes. Regardless, I win in both cases! I'm fortunate that these great kids are interested. If they can pull it off - I'll have a good candidate for a popular title for young advanced pianists.