An Evening at the Piano

This week on Arizona Encore is an evening at the piano, showing multiple facets of the instrument that introduces so many people to music firsthand.

Franz Liszt made the piano a vehicle for showmanship partly by celebrating his homeland in a series of Hungarian Rhapsodies. In one of our two performances from the Arizona Musicfest Young Musician Competition, Miles Fawson shares the eighth rhapsody.

While Stravinsky showed virtuosic compositional technique in his ballet Petrushka, it requires an equally robust playing technique to present his Three Movements from Petrushka, a later piano version he made from his orchestral score. Arthur Rubinstein, the recording artist beloved of many American listeners for his Chopin playing, was the original recipient. Both he and Stravinsky had five more decades of productivity thereafter! This tale of a poignant Russian puppet is relayed by Alexander Shtarkman.

Returning to the Arizona Musicfest Young Musician Competition, Jessica Zhang brings a sonata movement of Alberto Ginastera, the Argentine master who has found particular appreciation among musicians in the twenty-first century.

Three pieces of contemporary composers show the piano’s sustaining power. Linda Caitlin Smith nods to Howard Skempton the British contrarian in Unbroken of 2017, while John Luther Adams’ Nunatakscelebrates the jagged formations rising from glaciers and reflects on man’s relation to nature. Judith Gordon plays both at the Grand Canyon Music Festival.

Iceland forms the backdrop of Linda Buckley’s fridur, melding the piano with electronic sounds that depict the vast and uncompromising landscape of the north as presented by Cathal Breslin at ASU.