dead composers

Dear friends of piano music,

only a dead composer is a good composer. In any case, you get the impression when you see the programs of the concerts and recordings. Of course, the music of Chopin, Mozart and Bach, Schubert and Schumann is of immortal and timeless beauty and has all right to be omnipresent. The music, which many of us still find difficult to access and "modern", is mostly that of the early 20th century, so it is already around 100 years old. But what about the living composers? I've spotted some lately whose music isn't bulky and atonal, whose music touches the heart instead of tickling the ear and challenging the intellect, and I'm incredibly excited. This is an exhilarating and new experience for me, because until recently I, too, had very, very difficult time with the music of living composers. Two examples: during my studies, a composer friend of mine who was a bit older gave me a piece of his own and asked if I wanted to play it. He gave me 30 pages, it was still handwritten, not exactly easy to decipher, and it was twelve-tone music. I took it, smiling bravely, and put it on the piano. And there it was lying for a very long time……..Oh, I was so sorry, but I just couldn't play it. It would have taken me years to study it. At some point I returned the sheets to him and he wasn't angry with me. Still, I felt I had failed miserably. Some time later there was a kind of festival with contemporary music from the Netherlands. I was assigned a Toccata, I don't want to mention the name of the composer ...... the piece largely consisted of tone repetitions on one and the same key, played alternately with both index fingers. I already have problems with broken fingernails, but that was, as the saying goes, the worst case scenario. Here, too, I tried to be brave and practiced as much as my aching fingers would allow - not that much. The evening of the performance came. So I publicly tortured the grand piano and my broken fingernails, in the end I asked myself whether the audience could have suffered any damage,too,  for example perforated eardrums or the like ....... when I climbed down from the podium, I was shaken unbelievably . A very sympathetic, kindly smiling middle-aged man shook hands and thanked me very much for the „successful“ performance. It was the composer! I had no idea he would be there and I almost died of shock.

The other day I found the sheet music by chance, and I have to say that if you abstruse the physical pain it caused me, it's not bad music at all .....

Kerstin