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Bruce Brubaker on all things piano

Ensemble

February 9, 2015 by Bruce Brubaker

Nantes, 2015

Folle_journeeIt’s the last week of January, and I’m in France for the yearly mega-festival La Folle Journée. During 5 days, 330 concerts are being presented! (I play 5.) Folle Journée is the work of many people — especially René Martin, founder and artistic director of Folle Journée.

Recently, talking with Tim Page, I realized just what significant influences the ideas of a few concert presenters, a few producers (and critics) have been on my musical choices and artistic path. Tim introduced me to Philip Glass, encouraging me to learn Philip’s music. And Tim started me on the music of John Adams and Alvin Curran. Some may imagine ideal artists working with unfettered freedom, and making completely personal choices. Human beings are more often (always?) reacting, to other people, places, and things.

If we consider music to be a group action, rather than solitary individual acts — then it’s normal for musicians to react, to fulfill needs.

DeToutFlorsThis year’s Folle Journée is a good example. Initially, René Martin asked me for a program concerning/linking the music of J. S. Bach and American minimalism. During the planning, René expanded the festival theme from early 18th-century music to something more widely ranging across the centuries — “Passions of the soul and the heart.” So wide, this theme provoked me to make programs I would not have made, illuminating coincidences and correspondences. These short programs (45 minutes is the length of concerts at Folle Journée) are the outcome:

Program 1, Folle Journée 2015

Codex Faenza:
“Elas mon cuer”

Brahms: Intermezzo in A Minor, opus 116, no. 2

Codex Faenza:
“De tout flors” (Machaut)
“Che pena questa” (Landini)

Brahms: Capriccio in G Minor, opus 116, no. 3 (Allegro passionato)

Couperin: “La lugubre”
Couperin: “L’âme-en-peine”

Arvo Pärt: Für Alina

Brahms: Intermezzo in E Major, opus 116, no. 4 and Intermezzo in E Minor, opus 116, no. 5

Program 2, Folle Journée 2015

C. P. E. Bach: Les langeurs tendres
Schumann: Warum?, opus 12, no. 3

Glass: Gandhi’s Aria (from Satyagraha)

Schumann: Fantasiestück, opus 111, no. 1, Fantasiestück, opus 111, no. 2

Glass: “Opening”

J.S. Bach: from Der Kunst der Fuge: Contrapunctus 5 & Canon alla Ottava

In a piece like Brahms’s Capriccio in G Minor, opus 116, no. 3, marked Allegro passionato, the Christian implications of the word “passion” are not far away. Brahms’s fascination with early European vocal polyphony seems clear in his late piano music (the overlapping of cadence and continuation, the chromatic cross relations). Brahms was at least somewhat involved in the publication of François Couperin’s keyboard pieces prepared in the 1880s. The low-register sonorities and parallel lines of Couperin’s “La lugubre” seem Brahmsian…

In these programs, there’s a lot of dovetailing and harmonic inter-suggestiveness. The passion key of F Minor is the basic key of Glass’s “Opening.” C. P. E. Bach’s fragile Les langueurs tendres (again the passion key of F Minor) seems to be built on the inverted motif of Schumann’s Warum?

Couperin’s “L’âme-en-peine” is a B-Minor prelude to the B-ness of Pärt’s Für Alina which is a long dominant to Brahms’s E-Major Intermezzo. The calm arrival at C in the concluding phrases of Glass’s Satyagraha, gives way to the chromatically turbulent “improvising” (phantasieren) over a low drone C in Schumann’s first Fantasy-Piece, opus 111.

The making of programs (playlists) is often like this. But Alvin Curran‘s words seem especially apt. In a talk at Harvard, Alvin described today’s music world as the “music of all time, all of the time.” And, I’d add, made by all of us together.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andrew Porter, Bach, Brahms, C. P. E., Couperin, F Minor, Faenza Codex, festival, Folle, France, J. S., J. S. Bach, Journée, La Folle Journée, Martin, Nantes, Passion, passion key, Passions, piano, René, Schumann, Tim Page

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings like the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, Bedroom Community, and Arabesque reach millions of listeners, and break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Billie Eilish, The Weeknd — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have found so easily before. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online. My performances occur in classical venues like the Philharmonie in Paris, the Barbican in London, at La Roque d’Anthéron, at festivals such as Barcelona’s Sónar and Nuits Sonores in Brussels, and such nightclubs as New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge. Read More…

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PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting... From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]

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BB on the web

“Glassforms” with Max Cooper at Sónar

“Glass Etude” on YouTube

demi-cadratin review of Brubaker solo concert at La Roque d’Anthéron

“Classical music dead? Nico Muhly proves it isn’t” — The Telegraph‘s Lucy Jones on my Drones & Piano EP

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“Brubaker recital proves eclectic, hypnotic, and timeless” — Harlow Robinson’s Boston Globe review of my Jordan Hall recital

“Simulcast” with Francesco Tristano on Arte

Bruce Brubaker hosts 4 weeks of “Hammered!” on WQXR — “Something Borrowed,” “Drone,” “Portal,” “The Raw and the Cooked”

“Onstage, a grand piano and an iPod” — David Weininger’s story with video by Dina Rudick

“Bruce Brubaker on Breaking Down Boundaries” — extensive audio interview at PittsburghNewMusicNet.com

“Heavy on the Ivories” — Andrea Shea’s story for WBUR about Bruce Brubaker’s performances and recording of “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth

“Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners” — Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times on the first anniversary of the Poisson Rouge

“The Jewel in the Fish” — Harry Rolnick on Bruce Brubaker at the Poisson Rouge

“The Post-Postmodern Pianist” — Damian Da Costa profiles Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer

Bruce Brubaker questioned at NewYorkPianist.net

“Finding the keys to the heart of Jordan Hall” — Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe on the search for a new concert grand piano

“Hearing and Seeing” — Philip Glass speaks with Bruce Brubaker and Jon Magnussen, Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study

Bruce Brubaker about Messiaen’s bird music, NPR, “Here and Now”

“I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80” — notes and programs for concert series, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“A Conversation That Never Occurred About the Irene Diamond Concert,” Juilliard Journal

Bruce Brubaker plays music by Alvin Curran at (le) Poisson Rouge

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings such the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, and Arabesque reach many listeners, and seem to break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Cardi B, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have encountered so easily in the past. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online: this year I play at the International Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, traditional concert venues in Los Angeles, and Boston — as well as nightclubs in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, and New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge.

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