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NTS Radio: Piano Special
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After Satie’s death, Milhaud visited the eccentric composer’s Paris apartment to survey the estate. Upon entering, he had to walk knee-deep through a morass of hundreds of broken umbrellas; in the closet, Satie’s wardrobe consisted of a dozen identical grey suits; in the living room, two upright pianos sat stacked, one upside-down on the other, as if in mirror-image. Yes, this instrument has the power to drive the more fragile among us to the brink of insanity, and that’s rather how I felt after spinning two hours of solid ivories for NTS – romantic, atonal, tragic, jaunty, foreboding – not to mention decrypting the subsequent tracklist. I wanted to explore the myriad of voices, emotions and recording techniques that can be extracted and applied to this special instrument. Shouts go out to the daring contemporary composers I include here: Amanda Feery, Thymme Jones, Clade, and whoever else strives to keep the magic of the piano alive today.
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Harold Budd – Rub with Ashes
Scriabin – Mazurka No. 7
Josef Matthias Hauer – Atonale Musik No. 8
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Thousand Knives
Thelonious Monk – Baked Potatoe Blues
Debussy – Passepied
Maryam Guebrou – The Homeless Wanderer
Bartok – Mikrokosmos No. 121
Carlos D’alessio – India Song
Goldmund – Marching Through Georgia
Bach – Concerto No. 3 in D Minor
Daniel Teper – Lonely Pebble
Gonzales – Nero’s Nocturne
Felt – Ferdinand Magellan
Granados – Spanish Dance No. 5
Idea Fire Company – Life of the Party
Steve Reich – Piano Phase
Michael Nyman – Diary of Love
Panufnik – Wedding Punch
Clade – Untitled
David Shire – The Conversation
Fats Waller – Stanky Leg
Lutoslawski – Variations on a Theme of Paganini
Amanda Feery – Nocturne for the Old Raver
Josef Matthias Hauer – Atonale Musik No. 20
Thymme Jones – Taken
Shostakovich – Prelude and Fugue No. 2
Satie – Connect 4
Florian Fricke – Spirit of Peace (part 3)
Chopin – Nocturne No. 526
Poulenc – Waltz No. 5