THE PEOPLE UNITED

Classical Music

Pianist Omri Shimron releases a virtuosic and personal account of Rzewski's iconic hour-long solo work, The People United Shall Never Be Defeated! + Shimron draws from his own family history to construct a unique cadenza based on Zionist songs and draw a parallel between the Chilean-Marxist origins of Rzewski's chosen theme and other solidarity movements across the globe. + Based in Greensboro, NC, Mr. Shimron is an associate professor at Elon University in Elon, NC.

Includes work(s) by Frederic Rzewski. Ensemble: Eighth Blackbird. Soloists: Matt Albert, Molly Alicia Barth, Matthew Duvall, Lisa Kaplan, Michael J. Maccaferri, Nicholas Photinos.

• Two startlingly original works from one of the most influential figures in contemporary music. De Profundis has been described as a 'melodramatic oratorio' for speaking pianist.

Frederic Rzewski is most celebrated for his virtuosic variations for piano, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (8.559360). The Four Pieces began as a sequel to that breath-taking work, but whilst sharing certain similarities – Andean dance rhythms and tremendous drama – it occupies its own very distinct sound world, offering a compound of intense lyricism, shattering darkness, and hints of revolutionary fervor. The Housewife’s Lament is a set of variations on an anon. 19th c. tune with strong influences of Beethoven. The punning title Hard Cuts refers to cuts both budgetary and musical, and Rzewski’s signature elements appear throughout: folk rhythms, pointillist clarity, minimalism, and unique craftsmanship.

Frederic Rzewski was one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time.The themes explored in his late piano works are typical of his entire body of work in their uncompromising and universal nature. The intensely contrapuntal Ruins and virtuoso Wake Up are the last pieces in his vast piano cycle Dreams, while the War Songs weave together six war and anti-war songs from the last seven centuries. Winter Nights was written by Bobby Mitchell. Rzewski said of the three movements that they were intended to help with insomnia in a similar way to Bach's Goldberg Variations, though they are inevitably very different in the darkness of their moods.

REVIEWS:

In addition to Mitchell’s outstanding technical abilities, what struck me about this recording is the almost unbelievable clarity and realism of the recorded sound—Mitchell comes across as if he’s playing “live”, right in your living room.

This is clearly an interesting and thoughtful tribute to a composer who Mitchell was close to and deeply admired. Well recommended for Rzewski fans, particularly the War Songs and the two excerpts from Dreams.

-- The Art Music Lounge

Frederic Anthony Rzewski was one of the essential contemporary US composers; the first anniversary of his death is approaching. The Dresden pianist Benyamin Nuss impressively and virtuosically presents three of Rzewski's most famous works on 2 albums. Nuss starts the album with the four movements of the "North American Ballads" and takes you directly into the composer's sound universe. These pieces tell of the nation's workers, the downtrodden and oppressed, and illustrate Rzewski's view of the United States of his time. The second work of the double album, "Mayn Yingele", was written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Reich Pogrom Night and expressed the pain of a shift worker of that time. Rzewksi's best-known work "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" closes the album with 36 variations on a Chilean resistance song. Echoes of Brecht and Eisler's classic "solidarity song" enter the score, and various styles are woven throughout. Across the album, Nuss impressively demonstrates the technical precision and dedication with which he has fully immersed himself in Rzewski's works, making "Unite!" one of the most challenging recordings of his entire discography.

The first woman to record Frederic Rzewski's setting of Oscar Wilde's 'De Profundis', Bang on a Can/Steve Reich pianist Lisa Moore sheds powerful new light on Wilde's jailhouse meditation on imprisonment, debasement and the barriers that he faced as a homosexual. Rzewski, one of the great revolutionary American composers, has created an aggressively emotional soundtrack to Wilde's moving prose. 'De Profundis' breaks down the boundaries between a piano recital and a theatrical expierence. Written for a virtuosic pianist who also sings, shouts, and declaims, Rzewski's masterpiece is given a gripping re-interpretation by the fiery Moore, who brings a new character to the work through her passionate piano performance and compelling voice. With 'Which Side Are You On?' Moore brings together two of Rzewski's major piano/voice works on one CD for the first time as 'De Profundis' is paired with 'North American Ballads'.

In tribute to her longtime mentor and friend Frederic Rzewski, the intrepid, iconoclastic and politically active pianist-composer who passed away in 2021, pianist Lisa Moore presents five poignant performances of his most lyrical work. Taking its title from the vibrant, lush and melody-rich ‘no place to go but around’ (composed in 1974), the recording is of a piece with Moore's wide-ranging 2016 Cantaloupe release The Stone People, and finds her once again embracing an adventurist streak as she digs deep into the nuances of Rzewski’s timeless music. “He was blunt, matter-of-fact, frustrating, and brilliant,” Moore recalls in her revealing liner notes for the album. “Yet deep down, he was a real mensch who cared deeply for humanity. His works had strong underlying, or overlying, messages of social justice. He was a bohemian family man, giving most of his meager income to his children and grandchildren. Personally, when I once thought of quitting piano, he encouraged me to keep going — he said, ‘Why stop playing? Don’t waste your investment. Just do other things, too.’ We always got along. I worked with him closely on De Profundis and To His Coy Mistress. ‘The playing’s always fine, Lisa,’ he said, ‘but go further, to exaggerate the words. You have to be the crazy woman in the attic.’”

REVIEW:

Pianist Lisa Moore has recorded the music of Frederic Rzewski in the past, but this 2022 release, recorded not long after Rzewski's too-little-remarked death, makes a fine memorial to the composer. In general, Moore's playing is beautifully attuned to Rzewski's music, which has a kinship to minimalism in its use of repeated material but deploys it in such a way as to produce tension. She has the chops to handle Rzewski's eruptions of virtuosity as well. These are somewhat neglected Rzewski pieces; the substantial title work is probably the best known, but Moore makes a strong connection with each one, and this shows signs of being a Rzewski recording that will last.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

In December 2006, Gramophone Magazine named Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat “one to watch.” Now, with his second recording for Naxos, van Raat tackles one of the most important works of the modern piano literature: Frederic Rzewski’s fiendishly difficult set of 36 piano variations, The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

The People United Will Never Be Defeated! was written in only two months on a commission from American pianist Ursula Oppens, after Rzewski met Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Three months before Salvador Allende’s death, Ortega heard a street-singer shout El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!, which made him think immediately of a tune to accompany these words. A day later, the pop group Quilapayun played the melody. Since then, the tune has become an impassioned international symbol against any form of dictatorship. It was no surprise that Ortega and the politically leftist Rzewski greatly impressed and inspired each other when they met in Italy a few years later, resulting in Rzewski’s vision of this emblematic song.

One of the striking elements of this variation work is its length; the composition is a marathon for both the listener and for the performer. The extensive duration of its 36 variations is symbolic of the human struggle for change. Any struggle feels long, with many hurdles obstructing the final goal. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: this readily explains the huge array of compositional styles that Rzewski has used, from angry, highly-energized modernism, via melancholic references to blues, calculated dense polyphony and nostalgic folk-music to written-out free jazz passages. Rzewski incorporates contemporary piano effects in some variations, which he charges with an unusual dramatic meaning (for example, the sound of a slammed piano lid in Variation 11, reminds one of a gunshot). Throughout all variations the intervals of Ortega’s theme are always present, whether they are used as a twelve-tone row or as a basis for a fugal passage.

Also featured on this recording is the popular Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which was written in 1979 as part of the set North American Ballads. The basis for this work is an existing song bearing the same name, which cotton-mill workers used to sing while working.