Frederic Rzewski

Frederic Anthony Rzewski (born April 13, 1938 in Westfield, Massachusetts) is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.

Biography
Rzewski (pronounced zheff-skee) attended Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development: in addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola, he commenced a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he became a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. In 1971 he returned to New York. (Sadie 1980)

In 1977 Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège, Belgium. Occasionally he teaches for short periods at schools and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe, including Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, The California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego, and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. (ibid)

Many of Rzewski's works are inspired by secular and socio-historical themes, and feature improvisational elements. Some of his better-known music includes The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (36 variations on the Sergio Ortega song El pueblo unido jamás será vencido), a set of bravura piano variations written as a companion piece to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations; Coming Together, which is a setting of letters from an inmate at Attica State Prison, at the time of the famous riots there (1971); North American Ballads; Night Crossing with Fisherman; The Price of Oil, and Le Silence des Espaces Infinis, both of which use graphical notation; Les Moutons de Panurge; and the Antigone-Legend, which features a principled opposition to the policies of the State, and which was premiered, to the composer's amusement, on the night that the United States bombed Libya in April 1986. (ibid)

Nicolas Slonimsky (1993) says of him in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: "He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument."

Discography

Composed By Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski - The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1979)
Frederic Rzewski - De Profundis (1994)
Frederic Rzewski - Song and Dance/The Flower-Fed Buffaloes (1980)
Frederic Rzewski - Night Crossing (1997)
Frederic Rzewski - 'No Place to Go but Around (1977)
Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works 1975-1999 (2002)
Frederic Rzewski - Coming Together/Attica/Les Moutons de Panurge (1972) (1990)
Frederic Rzewski & Peter Weiss - L'instruction - Oratorio (1988)
Frederic Rzewski - North American Ballads/Squares (1989)
Frederic Rzewski - "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" (1980) in Double Edge Us Choice (1992)
Frederic Rzewski - Piano Music (1996)
Frederic Rzewski - Four Pieces/Ballad No. 3: Which Side Are You On? (1982)
Frederic Rzewski - Antigone-Legend (1997)
Frederic Rzewski - Bumps (1997)
Frederic Rzewski - The Road (1995-2003): Turns (Part 1), 1995; Tracks (Part 2), 1996; Tramps (Part 3), 1997; Stops (Part 4), 1998; A Few Knocks (Part 5), 1999; Travelling with Children (Part 6), 1999; Final Preparations (Part 7), 1999-2002; The Big Day Arrives (Part 8), 2002-03. The Road is one of the longest non-repetitive piano pieces written. A complete performance at Trinity College of Music, London, on May 8th 2006, featuring a wide range of pianists including Rzewski himself, Douglas Finch, Yonty Solomon, Philip Fowke, Philip Mead and Ian Pace, had a duration of a little under ten hours of music.

Played By Rzewski
Capriccio Hassidico (1991)
Musica Elettronica Viva - United Patchwork (1977)
Musica Elettronica Viva - Leave The City
Musica Elettronica Viva - Spacecraft
Musica Elettronica Viva - Live 7" (Recorded live at Philgena Oakland CA 1994)
Cornelius Cardew - We Sing For The Future!
Tom Johnson - An Hour for Piano (1985)
Henri Pousseur - Aquarius-Memorial
Henri Pousseur - La Guirlande de Pierre
Stockhausen - Klavierstück X (Wergo LP)