Valentine: For Piano = Für Klavier, and: Three Character Studies: For Piano Solo, and: Saloon Songs: For Solo Piano, and: 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale: Piano Solo (review)

Notes ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 670-673
Author(s):  
Dariusz Terefenko
Keyword(s):  
Solo Piano ◽  
Piano Solo

Keeping up with Carter

Tempo ◽  
2000 ◽  
pp. 2-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schiff
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
90Th Birthday ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Elliott Carter ◽  
Piano Solo ◽  
Concerto Grosso ◽  
Cello Concerto ◽  
Solo Violin ◽  
Paul Griffiths

What next indeed! Since his 90th birthday in December 1998, Elliott Carter has turned out a stream of works that are as personal and inventive as ever – if not more so. In addition to significant miniatures for solo piano, solo violin and string quartet, Carter has written his first settings of Italian poems (Tempo e tempi), his first concerto grosso (Askö Concerto) and, most surprising of all, his first opera, What Next? with a libretto by Paul Griffiths. (And a Cello Concerto – for Yo-yo Ma – is well underway.)

scholarly journals Cultural Revolution and Political Ambivalence in Zhao Xiaosheng’s Two Ballades for Piano Solo

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-175
Author(s):  
Ke Xue ◽  
Fung Ying Loo ◽  
Fung Chiat Loo ◽  
Xiaohang Wang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Piano Solo ◽  
The Revolution

The ascendancy of China’s Cultural Revolution led to a purge of the rightists, including musicians. This article unveils composer Zhao Xiaosheng’s emotional entanglement of fear and suppressed hostility toward the revolution, reflected in the political and artistic ambivalence in his two ballades for solo piano composed after his father’s death.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SELF: MICHAEL FINNISSY'S ‘FOLKLORE’

Tempo ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (223) ◽  
pp. 46-56
Author(s):  
Maarten Beirens
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Music ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Piano Solo ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extended Duration ◽  
The Subject

The compositional output of Michael Finnissy includes several major cycles for piano solo, which stand out by reason of their dimensions and their scope. English Country-Tunes (1977/1982–85), Verdi Transcriptions (1972–92/1988–95/2002-), Gershwin Arrangements (1975–88) and Folklore (1993–94) are all long, technically demanding and full of expressive potential. Yet they have been outdone by Finnissy's most recent piano cycle: The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001), a phenomenal endeavour, lasting over five and a half hours and employing every conceivable means of articulating musical expression and intellectual significance. Speaking of the scope of these works, however, does not merely entail their unusual length – although the extended duration, in comparison to what is considered customary for a solo piano piece, is indeed one of their prominent features. What is more significant here is their scope in terms of the wide array of ideas, concepts and statements that make up the musical text. In that respect, Folklore (like the other pieces mentioned here) is an unrelenting statement, reflecting upon or formulating a critique of many issues that are crucial to late-20th-century human existence. This article tries to demonstrate how all these layers of significance can indeed form the subject of a piece that is supposed to be ‘abstract’ (because textless, instrumental) music.

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Iddon ◽  
Philip Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Piano Solo ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
Similar Basis ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

The book is a comprehensive examination of John Cage’s seminal Concert for Piano and Orchestra. It places the piece into its many contexts, examining its relationship with Cage’s compositional practice of indeterminacy more generally, the importance of Cage’s teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, on the development of his structural thought, and the impact of Cage’s (mis)understanding of jazz. It discusses, on the basis of Cage’s sketches and manuscripts, the compositional process at play in the piece. It details the circumstances of the piece’s early performances—often described as catastrophes—its recording and promotion, and the part it played in Cage’s (successful) hunt for a publisher. It examines in detail the various ways in which Cage’s pianist of choice, David Tudor, approached the piece, differing according to whether it was to be performed with an orchestra, alongside Cage delivering the lecture, ‘Indeterminacy’, or as a piano solo to accompany Merce Cunningham’s choreography Antic Meet. It demonstrates the ways in which, despite indeterminacy, the instrumental parts of the piece are amenable to analytical interpretation, especially through a method which exposes the way in which those parts form a sort of network of statistical commonality and difference, analysing, too, the pianist’s part, the Solo for Piano, on a similar basis, discussing throughout the practical consequences of Cage’s notations for a performer. It shows the way in which the piece played a central role, first, in the construction of who Cage was and what sort of composer he was within the new musical world but, second, how it came to be an important example for professional philosophers in discussing what the limits of the musical work are.

PIANO SOLO

1975 ◽  
Vol LVI (3-4) ◽  
pp. 438-438
Author(s):  
HOWARD FERGUSON
Keyword(s):  
Piano Solo

Jerusalem, Music Centre: Andre Hajdu

Tempo ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (264) ◽  
pp. 78-78
Author(s):  
Malcolm Miller
Keyword(s):  
80Th Birthday ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Jam Session ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Music Centre

An 80th birthday concert full of the spirit of youthful exploration reflected the innovative interactive aesthetic of Andre Hajdu, the Hungarian-Israeli composer, whose oeuvre is gradually gaining wider international exposure. Presented by the Jerusalem Music Centre on 29 March 2012, the programme featured works from the last quarter of a century for chamber duo and solo piano, including two premières, culminating in an improvisational interactive jam session by an array of students and colleagues, joined by the composer himself at the piano. To begin was Hajdu's Sonatine for Flute and Cello (1990) ‘in the French style’ performed with panache by the flautist Yossi Arnheim and cellist Amir Eldan. It is an elegantly written work radiating the spirit of Hajdu's teachers Milhaud and (less overtly) Messiaen, with whom he studied in Paris in the 1950s and 60s. Beneath the light-hearted veneer of polyphonic textures is a serious, plangent expressiveness. The first movement, libre et gai, moves from the chirpy, Poulenc-like delicacy of a cat-and-mouse imitative chase, building tension towards a final stretto. In the second movement, molto moderato, Arnheim wove a lyrical cantilena for flute over gentle cello accompaniments, giving way to rarified high cello registers shadowed by eloquent lower lines of the flute. An exuberant dance-like finale, Libre mais un peu rythmé, increased in drama before receding to a tranquil conclusion.

Voyage in Space, 20 Pieces for Solo Piano

Notes ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 991
Author(s):  
David Burge ◽  
Morris Pert
Keyword(s):  
Solo Piano
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