20th/21st century keyboard piece needed!!!

[pnogirl]

I have been accepted to a conservatory for the fall and I'm trying my best to learn as much about music as possible (i.e. composers, theory, history, scales).  So far since January I've been working on the polishing up the following pieces for college:

Debussy-Au clair de la lune
Liszt-liebestraum no. 3
Chopin-Waltz in A minor
Bach-Prelude and Fugue in C minor
Mozart-Fantasie in D minor
Chopin-Polonaise in A major

As you can see, I have not worked on any atonal, modern pieces.  I need some recommendations for this category! The songs should be challenging but not impossible and workable, about an advanced level and doesn't matter the composer.  I can't wait to explore this new(to me) genre of music!

Thanks in advance!!

[49410enrique]

1. congrats on your accomplishment, both audition and your current rep. woderful!
2. modern music can really be all over the place and although I very much like it, i tend to be more 'conservative' in leaning towards scores that still look like 'normal' music, don't ask for 'prepared' instruments, and well for the most part things that are memorale (that is , is there a melody or unifying musical concept that lets my ear appreciate what the composer was trying to get across wihtough the mind F*#&/mind rape...). i like a few strange ones but this is where most of my knowledge of 'modern' piano music lies for now

3.  Try some Kabalevksy, incredible compositional output for our instrument, and although for the most part today is more remembered and played for his pedagogy type 'childrens' works, he wrote some beautiful, difficult (but rewarding) mature piano pieces as well that will challenge you and your audience.  I wouldn't really call him atonal, most of the time he's pretty benign preferring more diatonicism and the interplay of major and minor at the same time to some great effect. 

4. this one is he at his decidedly more  'romantic', and gets some pretty regular play on the international competition scene.

Rondo A minor Op 59

I used to have the musicology info on this but can't find it at the moment, 2nd vidd is Van Cliburn playing it , it was composed for the finals of the 1958 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition

"...

It was among the pieces Sergei Pavlov performed in the 1995 Bartok-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition where he won the Grand Prize. Recorded in Moscow in 1995.

[49410enrique]

another of my favorites (who coincidentally also has a last name starting with K....), regulars will know where i'm going with this, Kapustin.  I am a die hard fanatic and borderline obsessed with his sound.  A quick way to describe him is 'jazzical'.  you'll see what i mean.  i've posted a bunch before on his concert etudes but the next one in the op number line, op 41 the Theme and Variations are great too.  THis clip is from the 2nd place winner of the 2011 Tchaikovsky competition.it should let you click over to 720P, i would do that if your bandwidth/connection speed will support it.

[49410enrique]

i also think you should explore Scriabin post "Chopinesque" where he really started developing his own harmonic language and stretching tonality, in a way different from what the kids with the new/2nd Viennese school were doing i.e. Schoenberg etc....,

this piece is so deep. op 72 (1914) Vers la flamme

about it:
"...Alexander Scriabin completed his Vers la Flamme, Op. 72 for solo piano in 1914. It is a brief work around six minutes in duration, but its epic quality is pronounced and well contoured. In keeping with its title "Towards the Flame," the music careens from a somber, burbling opening to an ecstatic vision of a cosmic rupture.
 
Vers la Flamme is too good to be dismissed. It is through-composed, and progresses to an epiphany of vibrant pianistic color that is not revolutionary but stunningly approached. The intermediary music (the first three minutes) builds like an especially driven opening by Chopin, which is exciting and does not overstay itself. Its destination is an echo effect of repeated notes in the high register of the piano, becoming the new focus for listeners. This build is a continuous, supercharged, romantic texture. The echo effect in the piano is something modern and could not have been produced in the nineteenth century. It does not sound like a grafting of romantic and modern techniques. Scriabin no doubt was reaching for a mystical epiphany, and the sound of such. For alert, informed listeners, the beauty of this brief movement is its apparent clawing its way into a new style, with its roots in the old. The effect, in essence, is Post-romantic in the manner of Mahler's symphonies, intensely contracted...."

you also might want to listen to various Stravinsky works including his piano sonata.
there's lots of good 'non Russian' out there too but this is where the majority of my familiarity with post romantic/modern repertoire lies at the moment.

[drkilroy]

Debussy was first what came to my mind... But then I saw that you already have his work on your list. (Clair de lune was composed in 19th century so it does not count. ) What about Ravel? Some of his works might be doable.

If you prefer something more modern, try Messiaen's Preludes.

Best regards, Dr

[squarevince]

You might want to try some of the composers who drew inspiration from local folk tunes, like Bartok or Ginastera.

I'm a big fan of Bartok, check out his Allegro Barbaro for a good old fashioned stomp at the keyboard.  His suite Im Freien is very nice as well.

Check out Ginastera's American Preludes and Argentine Dances... he starts out with a lot of seemingly atonal and chromatic chords bouncing around, but from them emerge some pretty catchy folk songs.

Good luck!

[fftransform]

Not a single one of the pieces above would qualify as an atonal modern/contemporary piece.  However, if this is merely for some vague "20th/21st century" requirement in an audition, they'll work (although I would not recommend Kapustin; he is not taken seriously).  Some pieces that are often given to students who have not played modern or contemporary stuff before:

The Boulez is a bit more difficult but still quite playable, although it's a much more substantial piece.  Selections from Kurtag's Jatekok are quickly becoming popular, as well, for this sort of thing.

[symphonicdance]

The 3 sonatas of Hindemith could be something 20th century and atonal you want to explore, in addition to the great composers others have posted.  May be Berg's sonata, too.

[retrouvailles]

The 3 sonatas of Hindemith could be something 20th century and atonal you want to explore.

These are not atonal. There are key centers in all three sonatas. I'm doing the second one right now and it is a handful and very difficult to memorize. Great piece, but certainly not atonal.

[nikolasideris]

Here are a couple of very recently composed works for solo piano. Impressive as they can be... And ready made for the concert hall / audition I think. I composed the first one and played the second one in my final piano exams for my performance exams!

and

While these are not exactly known works or composers, the plus side is that both composers are alive and quite active, even through the Internet, so unlike Scriabin, Barok, Hindemith, Schoenberg, etc that you've been suggested, you could always hussle the composer with your questions about their own works!

Details for the performers can be found on the youtube videos description.

[quantum]

[bleicher]

Have a look at George Benjamin's Piano Figures.

[jonhall]

Satie has some interesting "modern" music. I'm not sure if it's technically hard enough for you to show off with, but I guess it's somewhere around the same as your Debussy (between Chopin Waltz in A minor and Leibestraum, I think)

[49410enrique]

omg just discovered this. it's awesome!

A Long-Forgotten Madness Op. 6 (1918)

I. "Longing: Languido" (1913)
II. "Etude: Pas tres vite" (1911)
III. "Impresion: Tres nerveux" (1916)
IV. "Epilogue: Poco agitato - Drammatico" (1917)

Anatoly Alexandrov (1888-1962)EDIT-THANKS A HINTON- D. 1982was a significant pre-Revolutionary Russian composer whose lineage stems from Rachmaninov, Medtner, and early Scriabin. Between 1907 and 1910 he studied with conservatives like Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory and was a precocious composer of piano music, including a substantial corpus of piano sonatas. He did not follow his fellow avant-gardists of the 1920s in pursuing a radical and revolutionary idiom. Instead, he stayed grounded in Romanticism and only occasionally made forays into the scriabinesque. He assimilated the lyricism of Rachmaninov, the clear form of Medtner, and the harmonic language of Scriabin. Viktor Belyaev, Alexandrov's first biographer, wrote in 1926: "If Myaskovsky is a thinker, and Feinberg a psychologist, then Alexandrov is, before anything else, a poet." Alexandrov was also a strong proponent of Stanchinsky and edited much of his compositions for publication.

Alexandrov's "A Long Forgotten Madness" is dedicated to the memory of Alexei Stanchinsky (1888-1914). As such, these pieces evoke the tonal language of Stanchinsky. They are the most experimental of Alexandrov's compositions in that they explore moments of atonality. The first piece even toys with quartal harmony.

[ahinton]

Anatoly Alexandrov (1888-1962) was a significant pre-Revolutionary Russian composer whose lineage stems from Rachmaninov, Medtner, and early Scriabin.

I think that you'll find that Alexandrov died in 1982, not 1962, his first piano sonata and first string quartet each date from 1914 and his cello sonata from 1981-82.

Best,

Alistair

[49410enrique]

I think that you'll find that Alexandrov died in 1982, not 1962, his first piano sonata and first string quartet each date from 1914 and his cello sonata from 1981-82.

Best,

Alistair

ah the wonders of youtube, he's a pretty reputable source most of the time (i.e his channel is well put together and he does a fair amount of the homework, but when the sheer volume of uplaods he manages, its understandable if the error slipped by him). many thanks for the correction, the text was taken from hexameron's remarks to the viddy. i hadn't had a chance to do my own reading on him yet (though i will !)

[iratior]

A very moving and yet thoroughly modern piece is "As Narrated by the Fly"(my translation, the original title is in Hungarian), in the sixth and final volume of Bartok's "Mikrokosmos".  This piece is much, much, much harder than it looks or sounds, though.  In order to have even a chance of being able to play it, I had to develop a whole new theory of fingering for myself.  It really does sound like buzzing flies, but it puts you in touch with the melancholy and mystery of life, the sheer determination, had by every life form we know of, and motivated by nothing if not love, to carry on.  Perhaps do it with a couple of other numbers from the last volume of "Mikrokosmos", in terms of invoking musical depth it will show that you really mean business!

[49410enrique]

while we're in the region, estonia gave us some nice modern music too. here' dr indrek laul (dma juliard,concert artist and majority shareholder/stake owner of the revived estonia piano company plays this great work on their new semi concert grand model just instroduced)

"1981" by Lepo Sumera