| Frederic
Rzewski performed by Marilyn Nonken
Marilyn
Nonken has given highly-acclaimed performances of Frederic Rzewski's epic
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a strongly political work based
on a protest song by Chilean musician and activist Sergio Ortega. Ortega
was struck by a defiant street performer who was chanting the words that
would become the song's title in front of the Chilean Palace of Finance.
This song became an anthem for the opposition to the oppressive Pinochet
regime. Rzewksi was deeply moved upon learning of this fusion of art and
dissent. In response, he crafted a set of 36 variations on the tune, culminating
in an hour-long virtuoso piano work.
Ms.
Nonken's performances of The People United... have meet with much critical
acclaim. Bernard Holland of The New York Times wrote, "Ms. Nonken's playing,
which included Ethan Iverson's racing, wriggling cadenza, was the victory
of a survivor who had met every mood and outburst head on and with style,
outlasting every obstacle."
Frederic
Rzewski was born in Massachusetts in 1938 and studied at Harvard and Princeton
Universities, notably with Virgil Thompson, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions,
and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he travelled to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship,
where he worked with Luigi Dallapiccola. In Italy, particularly through
his collaboration with the flutist Severino Gazzelloni, Rzewski began his
career as a new music player. His early relationships with Christian Wolff,
David Behrman, John Cage, and David Tudor shaped his development as both
composer and performer, and, with his colleagues, he formed the Musica
Elettronic Viva group. MEV brought together artists from the worlds of
classical music and jazz, working with live electronics and improvisation
and developing a musical aesthetic that celebrated the collaborative process.
Rzewski's written works have continued to feature elements derived equally
from the worlds of improvised and written music. Many of them are also
overtly political -- responding to the Attica Prison riots, the American
bombing of Libya, and the Iraq War -- and remind the listener of socially-conscious
artists such as Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson, whom Rzewski has identified
as influences.
|
Rzewski,
an accomplished pianist and improviser, gives the performer an opportunity
to play an improvised cadenza before the final variation. Ms. Nonken commissioned
a new cadenza from Ethan Iverson, pianist of The Bad Plus. Iverson says,
"As a confirmed Rzewski fanatic and as someone who has known the Chilean
tune since an adolescent crush on Charlie Haden's album The Ballad of the
Fallen, I was delighted to be asked to create a cadenza.... It utilizes
the same kind of pianistic effects (chromatic flurries above the theme,
left arm clusters) that I use as a performer in The Bad Plus. The first
left hand entrances imitate the very beginning of Rzewski's own cadenza
from his Nonesuch box."