Seven Disobediences
Seven Imperatives is my answer to the tradition of character pieces for piano, such as Debussy’s Préludes and Grieg’s Lyric Pieces; short, relatively simple but concise miniatures with a motto, and usually with one prevalent sentiment—like a musical short story. The title of each of the seven pieces is an imperative consisting of four letters: Seek! Push! Lean! Etc.
One of the pianists who has taken the Imperatives into his repertoire, is Kenneth Karlsson—central to the founding and artistic development of Cikada. So, when Donaueschinger Musiktage asked me to write a work for Cikada for their concert there in 2018, I seized the opportunity to explore another cornerstone of the piano literature: In a solo concerto, you see a whole orchestra dutifully following a brilliant ego that is completely dominating the stage. Beethoven’s last piano concerto was even called the Emperor Concerto, an epithet the thoroughly anti-authoritarian composer would have hated.
As I transformed Seven Imperatives (2001) into the “concert” Seven Disobediences (2018), I looked into Cikada’s beautiful collaborative social and artistic structure. When Kenneth, “The Emperor” (Italian: imperatore) gives his imperatives to his fellow musician, how do they react? Well, when he tells them to spin, they happily spin together with him, but when he says “SINK!”, they do the opposite and rise gracefully towards the sky. Towards the end, they all leave their positions and their instruments and gather around the piano’s big body to caress it and make it purr by fondly knocking on its shiny, black surface in loving disobedience.
-Rolf Wallin