Frederic Rzewski at EMPAC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, Saturday, March 20 at 8 pm

Frederic Rzewski

The pianist-composer performs a program of works for solo piano, including the early work “Dreams” (1961) and a selection from his recent and on-going series of short works “Nanosonatas.”

Frederic Rzewski has been a formidable presence on the new music scene in the U. S. and Europe since the late 1950’s. Now 72, he continues to explore and expand his musical universe, which is unlike that of anyone else active today or in the past. In one way, he is a throwback to the nineteenth century in that he is a pianist with an awe-inspiring technique and a composer whose music reflects his own performing abilities and tastes; it is easy to hear his music as a kind of aural photograph of his improvisations and explorations at the keyboard. This would place him in the tradition of the great 20th century composer-piano virtuosos Bartók and Prokofiev, but the composer who comes even more vividly to mind is Franz Liszt. (A younger pianist-composer highly favored by the public and the press [cf. NYT, March 21, 2010] these days is the Englishman Thomas Adès.) Rzewski’s best-known work is a 50 minute piano “monster-piece” which has been frequently compared with Bach’s Goldberg and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations: it is his “Thirty-six Variations on ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated,’” a tune which served as the Chilean national anthem during the left-wing regime of Salvatore Allende, composed in the mid-70’s.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller