Favorite Modern ( > 1950s ) piano composers and pieces

[sdwarwick]

I'd be curious what composers and pieces folks have found that were written in modern times.   Given that there are people graduating from music composition programs all over the world,  there must be some that have produced pieces that would be interesting to learn/perform.   Thoughts?
   

[brogers70]

Well, it just barely fits your time frame, being published in 1951, but I love Shostakovichs set of 24 preludes and fugues.

[kosulin]

Alina, by Arvo Pärt comes to mind. Amazing example of minimalism.

[swilliams002]

Maybe I'm biased, but my father, Timothy Williams, writes pretty good piano music! He mostly writes art songs, chamber music, and choral works, but here are some of his solo piano pieces.

Here's his charming Lullaby on the "Dies Irae" theme.

(performance by me)

A more extensive composition for piano, completed last year:

(I will eventually make a recording of this piece, but for now you will have to settle for a software-based rendition.)

[dizzyfingers]

Ligeti - Musica ricercata (1953)
Ligeti - Etudes (3 books 1985-2001)
Carl Vine - piano sonatas (4) + other works
Unsuk Chin - etudes
Nikolai Kapustin - Eight Concert Études for piano (1985) and many other works
Toru Takemitsu - Rain Coming (1973)

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Idk if I’d consider anything written 75 years ago modern, but Carl Vine and Takashi Yoshimatsu have made some noise in this century

[thorn]

Idk if I’d consider anything written 75 years ago modern, but Carl Vine and Takashi Yoshimatsu have made some noise in this century

If you asked historians "when does modern history start" you'd get a range of dates from the Industrial Revolution to the end of WW2.

And there's another thread with more pieces/composers: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=70692

[rachmaninoff_forever]

If you asked historians "when does modern history start" you'd get a range of dates from the Industrial Revolution to the end of WW2.

And there's another thread with more pieces/composers: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=70692

Modern general history and modern music are two different things.

IMO it’s weird to put someone who’s alive today who writes using electronics in the same time period as Shostakovich or Stravinsky lol

[brogers70]

Modern general history and modern music are two different things.

IMO it’s weird to put someone who’s alive today who writes using electronics in the same time period as Shostakovich or Stravinsky lol

In some classifications, Dante and Shakespeare, as poets, "divide the modern world between them." And in China, "modern" poetry begins in the Tang Dynasty, in the 700's CE.

[thorn]

Modern general history and modern music are two different things.

IMO it’s weird to put someone who’s alive today who writes using electronics in the same time period as Shostakovich or Stravinsky lol

The problem is people use the term in both senses. To me "modern music" should indicate style in the same way Baroque, Classical, Romantic do, and therefore the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues are Neo-Baroque while Debussy's Etudes are modern- so f- all to do with the date on the score. But I doubt we'll ever have a definition that everyone agrees with/uses to mean the same thing.