Solo Keyboard

Remembering Kalevi Kiviniemi: Organ Music of Jean Sibelius

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Kalevi Kiviniemi, the renowned Finnish concert organist, passed away on April 3 at his home in Lahti after suffering a heart attack. He was 65. Kiviniemi’s international career blossomed in the late 1980s, with recitals throughout Europe, the United States, Asia, and Australia. He was at home among the world’s greatest organs, and performed frequently at Notre-Dame in Paris. Kiviniemi was the first to record the complete organ works of Jean Sibelius. …

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Remembering Maurizio Pollini

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Maurizio Pollini, the acclaimed Italian pianist whose career spanned more than six decades, passed away on March 23 in a clinic in his native Milan. He was 82. La Scala, the opera house where Pollini frequently performed,  hailed the Grammy-winning pianist as “one of the great musicians of our time and a fundamental reference in the artistic life of the theater for over 50 years.” Pollini began performing publicly at age 11, …

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Debussy’s “Danseuses de Delphes”: Homage to Ancient Caryatids

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In 1894, a team of French archeologists discovered the toppled ruins of elaborate caryatids which adorned the Acanthus Column near the Temple of Apollo in the Ancient Greek city of Delphi. As sculptures representing female figures, caryatids form pillars throughout Greek architecture. The graceful, flowing Dancers of Delphi, constructed around 330 BC and now forever free of their structural burden, remain frozen in motion. The first of Claude Debussy’s 24 Préludes for solo …

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Martha Argerich Plays Brahms: The Rhapsodies, Op. 79

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The title, “rhapsody,” suggests free and improvisatory music in which raw emotion supersedes formal structure. Johannes Brahms’ two Rhapsodies, Op. 79 for solo piano only partially conform to this definition. While both are passionately Romantic, they unfold with a clearly defined sense of structure—ternary or “ABA” in the first movement, and sonata form in the second. Brahms wrote the Op. 79 Rhapsodies during the summer of 1879 at the Austrian resort town …

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Prokofiev’s Toccata, Op. 11 for Solo Piano: An Exhilarating Musical Motor

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Sergei Prokofiev’s Toccata, Op. 11 for solo piano is music of the Machine Age. Launched into motion with a volley of repeated D’s, the brief and blazing piece hurtles forward as an indomitable, perpetual motor. Edgy and seemingly demonic, it takes us on an exhilarating, increasingly terrifying ride, punctuated with quirky melodic leaps, jarring dissonances, and torrents of chromaticism. Composed in 1912, this is music of the 23-year-old Prokofiev. Shocking, previously unimaginable …

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Schumann’s “Widmung”: A Love Song Adapted by Liszt

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In September of 1840, Robert Schumann presented a collection of 26 songs, composed the previous spring, to his beloved Clara as a wedding gift. The cycle, Myrthen, Op. 25, contains intimate musical ciphers and codes which had personal meaning to the couple. Myrtle flowers, referenced in the title, are associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert, the opening song, Widmung (“Dedication”), begins with the lines, …

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Henry Cowell’s “The Banshee”: Haunting Sounds From Inside the Piano

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If you listen to Henry Cowell’s The Banshee without the benefit of seeing how the sound is being produced, you might never guess that it is music written for the piano. In fact, it is a piece which requires no piano bench, bypasses the ivories all together, and moves inside the piano to reveal a haunting new sonic landscape. At the time of its completion in 1925, The Banshee, and other works by Cowell, …

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