T here is a huge range of new piano music being written right now, and a huge range of new pianists to play it. I am very impressed with the ‘Keys to the Future’ festival, which fills a giant hole in New York’s musical life. This festival is an explosion of piano music of all types, played by a new generation of virtuosi.”
— David Lang, composer and co-founder of ‘Bang on a Can’.
T he ‘Keys to the Future’ [festival] is one of the most inclusive and thoughtfully curated piano series anywhere. The repertoire encompasses composers from ‘uptown’ and ‘downtown’; the U.S., Europe, and South America; and the worlds of jazz and contemporary songwriting.”
— Fred Hersch, pianist/composer.
T he plight of new music for solo instruments is inherently and substantially different from the plight of other new music forms for ensembles. Solo piano music is particularly vulnerable.
A s any repertoire ages, its impact on audiences gradually diminishes. In all the arts except serious music, audience growth is cultivated by new works. In principle, the sustainability of serious music (including piano music) must depend at least partly on the excitement and energy that a continual supply of, and performance of, new works provides. But these can’t be just any works. They must be new works that successfully stimulate and broadly resonate with the concert-going audience segments, both young and old. To alienate the existing bread-and-butter audience segments in a quixotic pursuit of new audiences is the worst of all possible worlds.
V ery often I get the impression that audiences seem to think that the endless repetition of a small body of entrenched masterworks is all that is required for a ripe musical culture… Needless to say, I have no quarrel with masterpieces. I think I revere and enjoy them as well as the next fellow. But when they are used, unwittingly perhaps, to stifle contemporary effort in our own country, then I am almost tempted to take the most extreme view and say that we should be better off without them!”
— Aaron Copland, 1941.
F or a professional pianist who is not primarily an academician, the market pressures to confine one’s performance repertoire to a relatively restricted range of well-known ‘war-horses’ exceed all bounds. Jeremy Denk has remarked several times about this in his
blog, as he himself rails against those pressures. No instrument is more competitive than the piano, and this fact weighs heavily on every working pianist.
F or a professional composer not primarily employed in academe, it’s similarly a question of going where the money is, where the greatest number of commissions and the biggest commissions and the highest-profile commissions are—and focusing your energies on those. The pressures are huge.
A nd for both, there is the practical matter of disturbing the peace, for those performers whose personal living quarters are the primary place for
practice or writing. In other words, if your innovations in composing or rehearsing new frontiers of pianism are too bold and aggressive, ordinary neighbors and family members within ear-shot will exert powerful ‘normative’ pressures of their own, long before the new work ever greets the light of day.
S ponsors to commission new solo piano works are fewer in number than for other genres. Presenters who program solo piano series are a subset of the chamber music presenters in each country. All of these are strong ‘filters’ that effectively limit the rate of commissioning of new solo piano works.
T he net consequence of all of this is that specialized piano festivals are the way to go, and KttF gets the multi-genre marketing ‘mix’ exactly right, to beautifully address all of the factors mentioned above. With regard to something like new solo piano works, festivals (and competitions) are the best way to connect all of the constituencies—the audience market segments of people who will subscribe to the program series; the presenters who can host such a program series; the funders who will financially underwrite programs of this type; the performers; the composers.
T o a greater extent than most other instruments and ensembles, I suppose, it is difficult to compose music for solo piano without great proficiency in the instrument. Close collaboration with a concert artist may get you by for composing for other instruments or voice, but piano? Not so much! As a result, a large part of the new piano repertoire consists of works by pianist-composers who are pianists first and foremost or who are very strong pianists in any case.
T he 1980s to the end of the century yielded a great deal of fine music, but piano music seemed to have remained alien to many of the composers of that period. Most of them composed only a handful of piano pieces, peripheral to the rest of their oeuvre. And solo piano music prior to the 1950s tended to be composed by composers whose main output was orchestral or otherwise very diverse, and whose main instrumental skills may have been on non-keyboard instruments. Since then, however, the solo piano literature has depended more crucially on composers who are themselves superb pianists. Frederic Rzewski is one such example.
R zewski’s 70th birthday [occurred in 2008], but the occasion [was] not ... marked with the sort of fanfare previously bestowed on Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Corigliano. This is kind of instructive—Rzewski primarily writes for the piano, and is clearly the most important and influential composer of works for piano of the past 25 years. In the 19th century, if you wrote great piano music you were a titan. But in the 21st century, you’re ... some sort of a marginalized ‘cult’ figure.”
— Darcy James Argue, SecretSociety blog, 09-MAR-2008.
J ouni Kaipainen’s ‘Je chante la chaleur désespérée’ (1981) and ‘Conte’ (1985) are quite wonderful solo-piano pieces. Also, Esa-Pekka Salonen's ‘Dichotomie’ (2000), say. Juhani Nuorvala’s ‘Viisi bagatellia’ or Veli-Mati Puumala’s ‘Fuga interrotta’ (1997) or ‘Hommages fugitives’ (2002). Hmmm...
J ukka Tiensuu and his piano pieces ‘Solo’ (1976) and ‘/L’ (1981) make use of live sound-reinforcement, to color the piano sound as desired. Tiensuu’s ‘Prélude non-mesuré’ and other works also push the envelope. An essential aspect of Tiensuu’s music is that he is an accomplished pianist and harpsichordist, who performs works of the Renaissance and Baroque as well as contemporary music.
A h, maybe that’s it! … At least one reason for the pre-2000 relative dearth of solo piano music that’s easy to find. In the present era of sensory overload, timbre has become a progressively more important element of contemporary music that can attract mass audience—audiences that crave more and more sensory overload. But what the piano offers to you as a composer in the way of ‘color’ is pretty subtle, and how to make the most of what piano can do is only adequately understood if you are tremendously proficient as a pianist yourself. Notes sounded with force are colored with many harmonics, while notes sounded quietly are more flutey, holding only hints of harmonic complexity… The biomechanics of what is practical and achievable on the keyboard can scarcely be taught in conservatory classes... And so on. Therefore, it’s monumentally difficult to devise virtuosic solo piano pieces that will be playable and be accessible to concert-going audiences and simultaneously be emotive/demonstrative enough to capture audiences’ tattered, overloaded imaginations—more monumentally difficult than composing virtuosic pieces for most other solo instruments. Can we infer that, lacking adequate pianist ‘chops’, many composers have followed a ‘path of least resistance’ and have therefore preferred to work with various chamber ensembles or orchestral music, or with other ‘celebrity appeal’ solo instruments? An issue for the educators/pedagogues to continue to work on, going forward!
A t any rate, the ‘Keys to the Future’ festival illustrates just how much excellent writing and collaboration between composers and pianists, and commissioning is going on today, and over the past several years, as attested in the blockquote from David Lang above. Cool!
P ianists who will be performing at this year’s KttF include:
- Amy Briggs
- Stephen Gosling
- Manon Hutton-DeWys
- Marina Lomazov
- Blair McMillen
- Lisa Moore
- Molly Morkoski
- Tatjana Rankovich
- Joseph Rubenstein
C omposers whose works will be represented include:
- John Adams
- Chester Biscardi
- William Bolcom
- Ryan Brown
- John Corigliano
- Daniel Felsenfeld
- Philip Glass
- Robert Helps
- Fred Hersch
- Aaron Kernis
- David Lang
- Lowell Liebermann
- Andrew List
- Henry Martin
- Eric Moe
- Nico Muhly
- Doug Opel
- Carter Pann
- Arvo Pärt
- Radiohead/arr. O’Riley
- Steve Reich
- Joseph Rubenstein
- Howard Skempton
- Elliott Smith/arr. O’Riley
- Bruce Stark
- Karen Tanaka
- Lois Vierk
- Mischa Zupko
F ounded in 2005, the KttF festival is now in its fourth season. The program is curated by studio pianist/composer
Joseph Rubenstein, DMA Yale 2001.
T he festival runs from Tuesday through Thursday, 19-21 MAY, at Greenwich House, Renee Weiler Concert Hall, 46 Barrow Street. (West of 7th Ave. Take the "1" train to Christopher Street, walk south two blocks and make a right on Barrow. BHMS is about a half block down on the right.) Each concert begins at 20:00, but the Renee Weiler Concert Hall doors open at 7:30 on the evening of each concert. Seats are general admission, $15 per concert, and are not sold in advance, only at the door, first-come, first-serve. The events were entirely sold-out last year, so be sure to get there early if you can.
- ’Keys to the Future’ contemporary piano music festival website
- ChamberBase search at Earsense.org [select ‘Ensemble=Solo’, check ‘Instruments’, select ‘Includes’, select ‘at least 1’, select ‘piano’, select ‘After 2000’]
- Muhly N. Repertoire-building is the only adventure. Arts Journal, 06-APR-2008.
- Nico Muhly website
- Sandow G. Myths. Arts Journal, 15-OCT-2008.
- MeetTheComposer.org (MTC) [New York State Council on the Arts]
- NewMusicBox [American Music Center]
- American Composers Forum
- Axford E. Traditional World-Music Influences in Contemporary Solo Piano Literature. Scarecrow, 1997.
- Burge D. Twentieth-Century Piano Music. Scarecrow, 2004.
- Dubal D. The Art of the Piano: Its Performers, Literature, and Recordings. Amadeus, 2005.
- Gordon S. A History of Keyboard Literature: Music for the Piano and Its Forerunners. Schirmer, 1996.
- Hinson M. Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire. 3e. Indiana Univ, 2001.
- Todd R. 19th-Century Piano Music. 2e. Routledge, 2004.
F avorite solo passage? The ending of the 2nd movement of the Schumann Fantasy, with all the right notes!”
— Jeremy Denk, , 27-MAR-2007.
