On a Sunday afternoon recital at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall in 1976, the late André Watts placed the piano music of Gershwin and Schubert side by side. A reviewer at the time noted that it was the habit of both composers, when at parties, to take a seat at the piano and dazzle attendees with their most recent music. The music of George Gershwin remained a staple of Watts’ repertoire. An …
The atmospherically titled Sessions, 3 A.M. is the most recent project of American composer, Michael Torke. It is a collection of fifteen pieces for solo piano, performed by the composer. The first track, Nave, was released as a single earlier this month, and the full album will be available in November. In the nave of a cathedral, repeating structural columns rise to a vaulted ceiling and convey a sense of order and symmetry. …
André Watts, the celebrated American pianist, has passed away following a battle with prostate cancer. He was 77. At the age of 16, Watts made his national debut, performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic as part of a nationally televised Young People’s Concert. Soon after, Bernstein invited Watts to perform on one of the orchestra’s subscription programs, where he substituted for an …
Epic is a word that could describe Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No. 22 in B-flat Minor, BWV 891. The companion pieces come near the end of Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the manuscript of which is dated between 1739 and 1742 in the final years of the composer’s life. From the Prelude’s opening bars, a dense contrapuntal conversation unfolds. At moments, the imitative voices resemble a fugue. The real fugue arrives with …
Claude Debussy’s twenty four Préludes for solo piano, composed between 1909 and 1913, are atmospheric snapshots. Each opens up an enticing new vista which draws us in with the immediacy and sensuality of the most vivid impressionistic painting. Les collines d’Anacapri (“The Hills of Anacapri”), the fifth prelude from Book 1, was inspired by the Mediterranean scenery surrounding the town of Anacapri on the island of Capri. Debussy visited this location in the …
Reflecting on the work of his father, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote, If ever a composer has shown polyphony in all its strength, it was surely Bach…. Nobody has shown as much as he, in works which normally seem so dry, as much imagination and originality of thought…. His melodies were indeed unusual, but they were always varied, rich in invention, and they are not at all like those of other composers. …
Antonín Dvořák was one of the greatest composers of melody. Perhaps the most catchy and popularly enduring example is the Humoresque No. 7 in G-flat Major (Poco lento e grazioso), originally written for solo piano. Propelled forward by an infectious, lilting rhythm, the melody develops in two-note steps which ascend gradually and explore a variety of motivic combinations before sinking into repose at the end of the phrase. As with much of …