Ballet for Ten Fingers: "Continuum" for Piano

I always had a fascination with the visual aspects of musical performance. To experience what I mean, turn off volume on a filmed performer in action. In this piece, written 42 years ago in Israel, I incorporated the idea of composing “performed silences.” I wanted to write a chain of short sound-blocks that connected in silence by visible choreography performed by the fingers, hands and arms of the pianist. In the original, pre-video version, I placed the pianist facing his back to the audience and the piano keyboard parallel to the rows of the audience. It occurred to me several years ago that one can now extend the visual experience of the piece by real-time video capture and projection of the pianist’s performing motion and add an extra dimension to the piece. The entire piece consists of five movements. The first, third and last movements, A, A1 and A2 have an identical score with lingering sustained sounds that have to be held until they die out. The pianist learns the complete score. As he performs on stage, he actually plays one bar with sound followed by one bar played silently. This takes place in the first and third movements in alternate arrangements. Odd number bars aloud--even number bars silent, in the first movement and the opposite in the third movement. In the last movement he plays all the bars aloud. The second (“b”) and fourth (“c”) movements are fast, busy and virtuosic: a sort of “musical spacers” between the airy, meditative movements.The pianist in this 4/23/2008 performance is Louis Goldstein Audio and video by Kevin Schlei and Dale Kaminski

Music From Almost Yesterday
composer: Yehuda Yannay
Pianist: Louis Goldstein
media: Dale Kaminski
media: Kevin Schlei

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Music

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