It is all too easy and convenient to bracket the virtuoso composer-pianist tradition with Mozart at the start, Rachmaninov at the end, and everything in between with Liszt, without paying attention to the later part of the 20th century. One reason for doing so may be that the piano itself played a less central role in the lives of many notable 20th-century composers. Stravinsky, for example, may have composed at the keyboard, yet his piano output was marginal in relation to his groundbreaking orchestral and ballet scores. On the other hand, many landmarks of 20th-century piano music were written by composers who could get around the piano with skill yet laid no claim to being practising virtuosos, such as Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Kaikhosru Sorabji or George Crumb.

One striking exception was Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021), whose prolific creative output for the instrument and forceful, authoritative virtuosity reinvigorated the composer-pianist tradition, together with reintroducing the art of public improvisation into the world of concert-giving pianists. When I first encountered Rzewski in the early 1970s, I was a budding teenage musician torn between jazz, contemporary composition and classical repertoire. The moment I heard Rzewski, I realised that a modern-day Beethoven, Chopin or Liszt was possible. Rzewski quickly became my role model, although it wasn’t until the late 1980s that our friendship blossomed. His knowledge and grasp of the standard piano repertoire often amazed me, whether playing through Schumann’s Noveletten as I prepared dinner or devoting recitals to all six volumes of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words.

In retrospect, this easily explained the determined eclecticism, breadth of scale and unbridled, passionate virtuosity informing Rzewski’s set of 36 variations based on the song ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated!’, written by Sergio Ortega (1938-2003), a Chilean composer whose work was part of the cultural movement inspired by the formation of the Unidad Popolar in 1969, together with the left-wing coalition under Salvador Allende’s leadership. Three months before Augusto Pinochet’s military coup, Ortega heard a street singer in front of Santiago’s Palace of Finance shouting ‘El pueblo unido jamás sera vencido!’, a well-known Chilean chant for social change. The chant stuck in Ortega’s mind, and a few days later he wrote the song.

The song quickly became an anthem for the Chilean resistance and was soon popularised by the Chilean group Inti-Illimani, who performed it at a New York concert that both Rzewski and pianist Ursula Oppens attended. When the opportunity arose of a commission for a work for Oppens to perform in the Bicentennial Piano Series at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, Rzewski proposed a set of variations based on ‘The People United’. ‘I mainly knew Frederic’s music through Musica Elettronica Viva, which was wild, improvisatory and atonal’, recalled Oppens in a 2015 interview with this writer. ‘So I was surprised by how tonal The People United was, not to mention its great length.’

Six degrees of unity

The work follows a rigorous structure based around the number six, which, as Rzewski often said, coincidentally relates to the six pieces in each book of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words. Ortega’s theme, for instance, contains 36 bars, followed by Rzewski’s own 36 variations. A modulation pattern takes the D minor theme and transposes it up a fifth with each successive variation, thereby covering all 12 minor keys. The variations are partitioned into six groups of six. Rzewski described each of the six groups as containing six stages, where different musical relationships appear in order: 1. simple events; 2. rhythms; 3. melodies; 4. counterpoints; 5. harmonies; 6. combinations of all of these. Each group embodies a distinct yet flexible character. The first six variations represent a kind of exposition, where the theme largely predominates. The second six variations feature rhythmic challenges. A lyrical, folk-like modality characterises the third variation group, while the fourth represents a kind of dark bravura in its angular rhythms and virtuosic passagework. Cycle five’s six variations are the freest and most exploratory in form, while the final six variations sum up all of the music that has come before, followed by the option to insert an improvised cadenza and, finally, a triumphant, full-bodied rendition of the main theme. In addition to the theme, two other songs of political import interweave throughout the variations. One is ‘Bandiera Rossa’, which refers to the Italian people who provided refuge for victims of Chilean fascism; the other is Hanns Eisler’s 1932 anti-Fascist ‘Solidaritätslied’.

The recordings

Frederic Rzewski himself made four commercially released People United recordings. The first appeared in 1977 on Edizioni di Cultura Popolare, a small Milan-based label. Here Rzewski does not play an improvised cadenza, and he makes several cuts in Variations 27 and 30, possibly to accommodate the music on two LP sides. The dry recorded sound reduces the pianist’s dynamic range to closet-size dimensions, while the piano’s tuning slips as the performance progresses. Some variations come off as perfunctory, with little of the expression and nuance that Rzewski indicates in his score. On the other hand, the technically demanding Vars 19‑23 have a supple litheness unmatched in Rzewski’s later recordings.

His 1986 Hat Hut release contains the uncut text, of course, plus a cadenza with stark contrasts and contrapuntal ingenuity. Here the composer-pianist’s tempos are spot on, and the close-up yet full-bodied impactive sound enhances the power, rhythmic drive and controlled freedom of Rzewski’s gripping and utterly alive pianism. The remake issued as part of Nonesuch’s ‘Rzewski Plays Rzewski’ box-set pales by comparison. Apparently Rzewski set it down in a single, unedited take. He told me (rather unconvincingly) that a pianist should sound tired rather than triumphant by the end. That said, a video preserving a 26 March 2007 performance from the Miami International Piano Festival does Rzewski’s pianism better justice, despite its obvious blemishes.

Ursula Oppens recorded The People United in 1978 for Vanguard with the composer present. Her version dominated the catalogue for years. Around the same time, Rzewski’s composer-pianist colleague Yuji Takahashi recorded The People United in Japan on a short-lived LP that later gained limited release on CD. His pianism is accomplished but slightly stiff and unidiomatic in the jazzier variations, and there are more than a few textual misreadings. About the latter, I must mention that the Zen-On Piano Library’s printed edition of the score contains numerous errors. Perhaps the Rzewski estate will sanction a corrected Urtext version.

Stephen Drury’s 1992 New Albion traversal doesn’t include an improvised cadenza (neither does Oppens’s Vanguard version), but his judicious pacing and nuanced sensitivity hold as much attention as the music itself. Like his mentor Claudio Arrau, Drury never makes an ugly sound, even in the work’s most aggressive moments.

Although Marc-André Hamelin recorded The People United in November 1989 for Altarus, the recording was never approved, edited or released for a number of reasons. Yet because Altarus listed it in its catalogue at one time, for years people looked fruitlessly for this non-existent CD. Hamelin’s 1998 Hyperion recording helped bring The People United to a wider and more international audience, as well as inspiring younger pianists to take up the work. ‘Hear him in the mezzo-forte continuation of the introduction, in the tirelessly evolving Var 27 or in the concluding violent distortions of the principal idea, and you are aware of a musician who can trump even the aces thrown down by Oppens and Drury’, wrote Bryce Morrison in his Gramophone review (July 1999). Certainly Hamelin raised the bar in regard to the effortless proficiency and pinpoint detail in Vars 19-24, or his fluent untangling of the six final variations’ rapid thematic shifts and complex textures. Also note Hamelin’s scintillating and inventive improvised cadenza, which incorporates the aforementioned Eisler song.

Thomas Schultz’s 2003 interpretation on Wooden Fish is not easy to source but well worth mentioning. It offers comparable virtuosity but from an edgier, harder-hitting and more elemental vantage point that listeners will find either exhilarating or exhausting, or perhaps a little of both.

Ralph van Raat’s 2007 Naxos recording brought a budget-price contender into the mix. The Dutch pianist’s long experience in new music and natural affinity for Rzewski’s multifaceted keyboard idiom are consistently evident, together with his ability to articulate each variation’s specific character. In many ways his precise articulation and his keen ear for harmonic tension and release mirror Rzewski’s own readings. The elaborate ‘bluesy’ embellishments in Vars 13 and 15, for example, resonate in a looser, more plain-spoken manner compared to Hamelin’s refinement. He digs more defiantly into Var 26’s march rhythms than Hamelin, although not quite matching the latter’s superhuman dispatch of the fourth section’s finger-twisters. Raat’s cadenza features a muted bass note sparsely and obsessively hammered out, plus a rhapsodic episode incorporating material from the long and already cadenza-like Var 27.

The Danish pianist Ole Kiilerich studied with both Oppens and Drury and his 2009 People United splits the difference between Oppens’s incisive momentum and Drury’s tonal refinement. Sometimes he telegraphs sudden dynamic shifts with the tiniest comma or pause, or else he undermines the sense of surprise in Rzewski’s sudden tempo shifts or rude interruptions. But these points should not detract from the pianist’s fastidious preparation and loving commitment to the score, along with the superb recorded sound that captures Kiilerich’s gorgeously regulated Steinway Model D concert grand.

As a pianist who comfortably blurs classical/popular/jazz boundaries, it comes as no surprise that Kai Schumacher taps effortlessly into Rzewski’s sound world. My main quibbles about his 2009 recording are over-emphatic loud passages, along with Schumacher’s reluctance to play as softly as the composer indicates. Still, Rzewski admired this recording, and I also hear why he singled out Christopher Hinterhuber for praise. In the first cycle, Hinterhuber perfectly nails the melodic displacements in Vars 1 and 2, and effortlessly negotiates the following four variations’ explosive runs and big chords. Yet while the composer requests that the opening theme be played ‘with determination’, Hinterhuber subjects it to tapered phrases, cadential ritards and other stock-in-trade interpretative gestures that suit Liszt more than Rzewski. He underplays Var 7’s grace notes and doesn’t make enough of a contrast between Var 15’s improvisatory right-hand lines and left-hand walking bass. I also suspect that Hinterhuber plays much of the fourth cycle faster than he can hear it. Yet he creates a subtle improvised cadenza featuring sparsely deployed chord clusters and attractive lyrical passages.

American-born, Israeli-raised Omri Shimron chose The People United for his 2014 solo debut CD release. His earnest and forthright readings of the first six variations are a tad heavy and square. Moreover, in Var 5 he ignores Rzewski’s directive to play the forte chords staccato and then catching the harmonics with the pedal; instead, he just plays loud and sustained chords. The performance improves as it progresses, with Shimron’s tone opening up in Var 16’s complex exchanges between the hands, plus added intensity to more vehement passages. Still, a general lack of lightness and flexibility prevails.

Rzewski enthusiastically endorsed Corey Hamm’s splendidly engineered People United (also issued in 2014), and for good reason. The pianist hits on ideal tempos and astute transitions that consistently ensure character and continuity, fortified by his attentive pedalling and accentuation. Note, for example, the perfectly weighted ‘funeral march’ chords in Var 9, the shapely presence of Var 17’s bass line and the sustained long-lined introspection of Var 27. There’s no improvised cadenza, but it doesn’t matter.

Ursula Oppens’s 2014 remake, however, does incorporate a cadenza (she told me there wasn’t room for one on the Vanguard recording). Hers is brief and absolutely lovely, setting the stage perfectly for the theme’s recapitulation. Elsewhere, Oppens surpasses her younger self in nearly every instance. The opening theme, for starters, is more impassioned at its loud peaks, while the first six variations gain energy and character through sharper voice-leading. Var 9’s counterpoint benefits from Oppens’s drier, more cogently contoured rethinking. Var 15’s improvisatory, folk-like quality spills over into more elaborate territory in Var 16. Most pianists (Rzewski included) sustain a similar mood and tone between these two variations: not Oppens, whose feathery pianissimos and una corda pedal deployment at Var 16’s outset create a striking timbral shift that accurately reflects what’s marked in the score. And Oppens’s playful and conversational way with Var 19’s jagged motifs contrasts with way too many pianists who simply pound them out.

Hot on the heels of Oppens’s remake came Igor Levit’s Gramophone Award-winning release containing The People United alongside Bach’s Goldberg and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Levit is not just on top of Rzewski’s formidable demands but inside them as well. He tosses off Var 10’s rapid-fire Boulezian brushstrokes and all of Part 4 as if they were child’s play. Levit also understands that the marching rhythms throughout Var 26 and elsewhere benefit from a steady gait, rather than most pianists’ tendency to accelerate. Furthermore, Levit’s six and a half-minute cadenza reflects the entire work in microcosm as if the pianist had planned it in advance, although apparently he unleashed it in a single extemporised take. One can take issue with Levit’s occasional lack of textural differentiation in thicker contrapuntal passages. and he also tends to gild the proverbial lily when the theme reappears at certain junctures, such as in Var 13, which comes off closer to a Grieg Lyric Piece than a Chilean resistance song. But that’s nitpicking over a major recorded achievement from a pianist whom Rzewski greatly admired and mentored.

Daan Vandewalle, another close Rzewski colleague and friend, seems bent on leaving a personal imprint, especially in how he eases into rather than pounces upon the theme. If his lilting and yielding rubato in Var 1 sounds slightly arch, closer scrutiny reveals Vandewalle going out of his way to clarify the phrase groupings, consequently providing a contrasting point of reference to Var 2’s resolute firmness. Similarly, a more expansive and lyrical Var 3 than usual offsets Var 4’s forward drive. Whereas Levit sweeps through Var 8, Vandewalle probes the intricate voice-leading. Some of his tempo fluctuations in section four may catch listeners off-guard but the improvised cadenza is a real tour de force of sparse bitonality meeting Lisztian bravura.

Most pianists use Rzewski’s self-interpretation as a basic guide or starting point. Vadym Kholodenko, by contrast, completely goes his own way. His essentially pianistic conception draws attention to itself for sheer virtuosity and colouristic resources. The theme’s tapered nuances may be more perfumed than protesting, yet the fierce crescendo leading into the theme’s A-section reiterations hits home. Note, too, the unusually skittish melodic leaps in Vars 2, 3 and 7, and how Var 10’s normally jagged atonal phrases are elegantly arched. Kholodenko’s freely fluctuating pulse and inventive pedalling put a convincingly Romantic spin on Vars 14 and 15, while his hair-trigger staccatos throughout the fourth section are softer, faster and suppler than the so-called norm.

Perhaps Kholodenko sacrifices power for speed, but he makes quite a meal of Var 24’s expressive directives; the weighty allargando leading into the high, siren-like tremolo B flat will leave you limp. If Kholodenko’s unusually fast pacing misses Var 27’s searching, introspective point, he compensates by tearing through the sixth section, which culminates in an awesome improvised cadenza. In short, Kholodenko conveys his unorthodox conception without any barrier between idea and execution, and benefits from excellent sound. By contrast, drab and colourless engineering only underlines Kevin Lee Sun’s dry, under-characterised and dynamically limited version. The opposite holds true about the over-resonant ambience of Hannah Shybayeva’s performance, with unvaried articulation and generic expressive gestures.

Pianistically speaking, Takuya Otaki has fingers to burn, yet mostly turns in cold, mechanical and harmonically tensionless playing. Once in a while he bursts his robotic bubble, as in his languidly sensitive Vars 13 and 14, but that’s the exception. Benyamin Nuss largely rivals Otaki’s assured grasp of the notes but to more musical ends. Once past his foursquare rendition of the theme, Nuss unravels Rzewski’s long narrative with well-chosen tempos and bracing textural clarity, capped by an effectively understated cadenza.

Conclusion

Anyone who cares about The People United must hear Rzewski play Rzewski, whose self-interpretation is best represented by his Hat Hut release. If you can forgo the cadenza, Corey Hamm will please you as much as he did the composer. The reference-worthy Hamelin and Levit editions need no special pleading. However, for its ideal fusion of passion and intellect, for its sophisticated yet natural-sounding pianism and for its unerring pacing and vivid characterisations, Ursula Oppens’s Cedille remake is my top choice. Oh yes, Frederic liked it too!

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

c1976 Frederic Rzewski Edizioni di Cultura Popolare VPA114 (LP)

1978 Ursula Oppens Piano Classics PCL0019

1978 Yuji Takahashi ALM ALCD19

1986 Frederic Rzewski Hat Hut ARTCD6066

1989 Marc-André Hamelin Altarus (unpublished)

1992 Stephen Drury New Albion NA063

1998 Marc-André Hamelin Hyperion CDA67077

1998 Frederic Rzewski Nonesuch 7559 79623-2 (7 CDs)

2003 Thomas Schultz Wooden Fish Recordings

2007 Ralph van Raat Naxos 8 559360

2007 Frederic Rzewski VAI DVDVAI4440 (DVD)

2009 Ole Kiilerich BRIDGE 9392

2009 Kai Schumacher Wergo WER6730-2

2011 Christopher Hinterhuber Paladino  PMR0037

2012 Corey Hamm Redshift TK431

2012 Omri Shimron New Focus FCR134

2014 Ursula Oppens Cedille CDR90000 158

2015 Igor Levit Sony Classical 88875 06096-2 (3 CDs)

2017 Daan Vandevalle Etcetera KTC1589

2021 Vadym Kholodenko Quartz QTZ2149

2021/22 Benyamin Nuss Berlin Classics 0302804BC (2 CDs)

2023 Hannah Shybayeva TRPTK TTK0126

2023 Kevin Lee Sun Navona NV6654

2024 Takuya Otaki ALM ALM141 (2 CDs)

This feature originally appeared in the SUMMER 2025 issue of International Piano – Subscribe Today

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