Recital themes with lecture-demonstration components:

Crossroads in Piano Music

Composers featured on this recital explore intersections between musical styles, resulting in turning points for piano writing and aesthetics of sound. This recital can follow several different trajectories and cover a significant time span with works chosen from the following composers and others: W.A. Mozart, Franz Schubert, Leyla Saz, Claude Debussy, Bela Bartok, Adnan Saygun, John Cage, Ge Gan-ru, Toru Takemitsu.

“Wind in the Leaves”: Musical Dialogues between East and West

Featuring works by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Toru Takemitsu, Keiko Fujiie,
Eka Chabashvili, Kathryn Woodard

Fascination with the East was central to the musical styles of Debussy and Ravel. This recital compares early works by these composers to recent works by Asian and American composers who answer back with their own interpretations of East and West.

The Tradition of Innovation in American Piano Music

Featuring works by Henry Cowell, John Cage, Ge Ganru, Frederic Rzewski

This recital introduces and explains innovative techniques at the piano that several American composers developed. Extended techniques call for playing inside the piano, by strumming, plucking, muting strings, for example. Prepared piano uses common objects to alter the sound of the strings, such as screws, bolts, rubber, bamboo, etc.

Nationalism and Modernism in Eastern European Piano Music

Featuring works by Bela Bartok, Leos Janacek, Ahmed Adnan Saygun, Sergei Prokofiev

In Western European music, nationalism is considered antithetical to the precepts of modernism. However, works by these composers demonstrate the link between nationalism and modernism in Eastern European music of the early twentieth century.

The Remix: Transcription, Quotation and Appropriation in Works for Piano

Featuring works by Bela Bartok, Frederic Rzewski, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, Ahmed Adnan Saygun, Kathryn Woodard

The remix has become a predominant form of composition in many genres. This recital explores early and current examples of the remix concept in the form of transcriptions, quotations, and appropriation of stylistic characteristics.