Help: identify obscure 20th century avant garde piece

[bikelane]

Hello, Pianists!  I am new to this site and forum, so please forgive me if this has been covered already.  I'm trying to find the name of the composer of a piece of piano music.  I know that at least one recording exists, since I heard it on the radio probably twelve years ago or more.  The piece consists of left and right hands playing a fairly straight-forward line in unison.  My recollection is that the line resembles an arpeggio, or maybe something that Phillip Glass might compose.  This continues throughout the piece, but the trick is that one hand plays one more repetition than the other, in the same time.  So, they start together, and they end together.  In the middle, there is a progressive shifting of the line played in one hand against the other, and the gradual morphing of the phase is really quite striking.

It seems like a fairly difficult piece to play, but I'm not much of a pianist, so I really can't judge.

Can anyone help me out?  Thanks immensely in advance.

-Lane Wimberley
Austin, TX

[jabbz]

Piano Phases by Steve Reich or something like that?

[ryguillian]

Hello, Pianists!  I am new to this site and forum, so please forgive me if this has been covered already.  I'm trying to find the name of the composer of a piece of piano music.  I know that at least one recording exists, since I heard it on the radio probably twelve years ago or more.  The piece consists of left and right hands playing a fairly straight-forward line in unison.  My recollection is that the line resembles an arpeggio, or maybe something that Phillip Glass might compose.  This continues throughout the piece, but the trick is that one hand plays one more repetition than the other, in the same time.  So, they start together, and they end together.  In the middle, there is a progressive shifting of the line played in one hand against the other, and the gradual morphing of the phase is really quite striking.

Sounds like something by Reich indeed. It also sounds very much similar to Conlon Nancarrow's Study No. 21 "Canon X" for player piano; I've linked a recording below (from the Wergo set of all of Nancarrow's player piano studies).

https://nietzsche.ryguillian.com/canonx.mp3

[rob47]

it's not this but this classic is what i thought when i began reading your post

[richard black]

Almost certainly 'Piano Phase' [sic] by Reich.

[retrouvailles]

I am 100% sure it is Piano Phase by Steve Reich. I would not call it avant garde though. It is quite the contrary.