POETRY IN PIANO

IN SPRING OF 2007, 2008, and 2009, Ms. Buchanan will tour with three “Poetry in Piano” concerts featuring music inspired by or relating to poetry, with repertoire drawn from many different cultures and different times throughout history. For those pieces that have been composed around or inspired by specific poetic texts, such as Liszt’s Petrarch sonnets, the first Ballade of Brahms’s opus 10 set, or Cindy Cox’s contemporary piece “The blackbird whistling/Or just after”, Ms. Buchanan will present a brief discussion of the source texts, examining how the form, style, and substance of the music relates to the form, style, and substance of the poetry that inspired its composition. For those piano pieces that purport to imitate or replicate a poetic form, such as the pantoum, villanelle, or sonnet, she will discuss the formal structure of the poetic form and show how this structure is rendered, modified, or transformed in the music. Ms. Buchanan may also select piano pieces that refer to poetry after the fact of their composition, such as several of Debussy's preludes, which he titled afterwards with lines drawn from the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Leconte de Lisle, and Shakespeare, Schumann’s “In der Nacht,” which reminded him afterwards of the mythological legend of Hero and Leander, or contemporary composer Joan Tower's four-movement work No Longer Very Clear, in which she refers retroactively to lines of John Ashbery's poetry in the titles of each of the four movements. Finally, many piano pieces claim in their titles to be “Poems,” and Ms. Buchanan will also perform a selection of these pieces, such as Scriabin's Poèmes and Villa Lobos's Rudepoêma (Savage Poem), seeking to find in the specifics of each piece what the composer may have meant by titling his or her work "Poem".

Ms. Buchanan will continue her “Poetry in Piano” project in future years, continuing her exploration of the wealth of solo piano music inspired by poetry. Future programs will include such crucial works as Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, Liszt’s Dante Sonata and Ballade in B minor, and Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata. Ms. Buchanan will also continue her ever-expanding exploration of contemporary repertoire, including on the “Poetry in Piano” series such newer works as Lisa Bielawa’s Start (inspired by verbs from a section of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin) and Judith Shatin’s three-movement piano work Widdershins, with musical structures directly inspired by her fascination with the word “widdershins”, meaning counterclockwise or contrary.

In her performances, Ms. Buchanan is flexible about the method of discussing the topics at hand, and is willing to present a lecture-recital, to conduct a more lengthy and detailed analysis in a separate pre-recital talk, to host an open discussion with a Question and Answer session, or to perform solely the music itself, leaving the presentation of the related poetic texts and ideas to program notes to be distributed at the concert.


Piano works to be performed in her initial three-part “Poetry in Piano” series include:

Debussy, four Preludes from Book I
Brahms, Four Ballades, Op. 10
Scriabin, Poèmes, Op. 32 and 44
Liszt, Sonetto 104 del Petrarca
Villa-Lobos, Rudepoêma
Schumann, Fantasiestücke, Op. 12
Cindy Cox, The blackbird whistling/Or just after
Rzewski, Winnsboro Cottonmill Blues, from Four North American Ballads
Joan Tower, Throbbing Still


Future works to be explored in upcoming “Poetry in Piano” programs include, among others:

Ravel, Gaspard de la Nuit
Beethoven, The Tempest Sonata
Mendelssohn, Transcriptions from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Liszt, Après une lecture de Dante—Fantasia quasi sonata
Liszt, Ballade in B minor
Schumann, Fantasy, Op. 17
Scriabin, Sonata No. 5, "Poem of Ecstasy," Op. 53
Lisa Bielawa, Start
Judith Shatin, Widdershins