There are events in everyone's life that are unforgettable---the death of someone you love, say, or the first time you have sex or eat sushi.  For lovers of new music, hearing American composer Frederic Rzewski's piano masterpiece The People United Will Never Be Divided for first time falls into that category.

 Originally commissioned by and written for Ursula Oppens as a piece to commemorate the American bicentennial, The People... is a simple and haunting Chilean political protest song upon which the 64-year-old Rzewski (pronounced ZHEV-ski) developed a series of 36 variations of jaw-dropping originality.  For nearly an hour, Rzewski  astonishes the ear with sounds that you simply have not heard before. 

In what is certainly one of the most important and welcome new releases of the year, Nonesuch has just issued Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works, 1975-1999, a
seven-disc box set that contains all of the master's "greatest hits."  (Alas, we're not on Nonesuch's review copy list so we had to save up to buy a copy.  Fortunately, Rzewski must have demanded that they keep the price down; Amazon has the monster box for $45.99.)

Born in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1938, Rzewski studied composition with giants of American 20th-century music, including Randall Thompson, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. He became politically active in the 1960s, and produced works frankly inspired by contemporary social issues, such as musical settings of a letter from a prisoner at Attica and a soldier in Vietnam. 

Long an expatriate, Rzewski went to Italy in 1960, where he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola and met Severino Gazzelloni, with whom he performed in a number of concerts, thus beginning a career as a performer of new piano music. Rzewski's early friendship with Christian Wolff and David Behrman, and (through Wolff) his acquaintance with John Cage and David Tudor strongly influenced his development in both composition and performance. In Rome in the mid-sixties, together with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, he formed the free improvisation group Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome.  He later toured as a pianist with Karlheinz Stockhausen although he was a close friend of and musical co-conspirator of British radical Cornelius Cardew, who once wrote a book titled "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism."
  Since 1977, Rzewski has been Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liege, Belgium.

Rzewski is a formidable pianist as well as an audacious stage perfomer.  His  32-minute "oratorio" for solo piano,  De Profundis, he writes, "demands a combination of virtuoso technique and a total lack of inhibition on stage, thus virtually guaranteeing that no mediocre or conventional performer will dare to go near it."

Composed in 1991, it requires the pianist to simultaneously play and recite a deeply moving Oscar Wilde letter written while Wilde was jailed for homosexual practices. 

Two discs are devoted to the first four parts of The Road,  a "novel" for solo piano, still in progress. Divided into "miles" -- short pieces intended to work like chapters -- the full score when completed next year will last around eight hours. The piece is filled puncuated by raggedy marches and train whistles, as Rzewski plays and sings and even reads in Russian from Gogol's "The Nose." 

A 45-minute Piano Sonata from 1991 pieces together fragments of the medieval plainchant L'Homme Armé with Ring Around the Rosy, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,  Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance and Three Blind Mice in a dazzling first movement. The second movement is a long set of variations on Taps. The final movement is 27 variations on the plainchant tune.

For Rzewski fans, the appearance of this Nonesuch treasure trove is an occasion to celebrate--better than sex or sushi (or at least sushi). For first-time Rzewski listeners, it's a chance to get to know the 21st century's Franz Liszt and hear some music you'll never forget.

View Frank Oteri's interview 
with Frederick Rzewski
 .

Praising Lee Hyla
David Lang's Passing Measures
Three Tales at BAM
Naxos at 15
On the Transmigration of Souls
Dead Man Walking
David Krakauer's The Year After
Steve Reich/Alan Pierson
The Good Solider Schweik
Neely Bruce Loves a Parade
John Cage's 90th Anniversary
Michael Gordon's Decasia
Bright Sheng's Silver River
 Earle Brown Dies
Oliver Knussen at 50
John Eaton's "...inasmuch" Debuts
Interview with Gloria Coates
Entering the 21st Century with
Kitty Brazelton
Julia Wolfe after minimalism
Philip Glass at 65
Interview with Poul Ruders
Our writers welcome your comments on their pieces.  Send your witty bon mots to jbowles@sequenza21.com and we might even publish some of them here.  And, don't forget--if you'd like to write for Sequenza21 (understanding that we have no money to pay you), send me a note. JB