After pianist Simon Smith‘s performance of Gyorgy Ligeti’s impossibly virtuosic Etudes, The Scotsman described him as “a phenomenon—nothing daunts him, technically or musically.” Smith brings his courageous and prodigious musicality to MIT for a rare all-Karlheinz Stockhausen program, featuring career-spanning selections from the seminal German composer’s 19 Klavierstücke (Piano Pieces), composed by Stockhausen over a 50 year period, from 1952-2003.
For this program, Smith has chosen a selection of pieces capturing the evolution of Stockhausen’s creative vision, from his stunning explosion of total serialism in the 1950s to his later expansive, quasi-theatrical work. Smith says, “The first set of four pieces are 1950s modernist classics; the second set (V-X) explores an ever-widening range of pianistic and compositional techniques over more ambitious timescales, and often surprise with their sensuous beauty. The two pieces from the LICHT cycle of operas, XIII and XIV, are again a whole new world, incorporating aspects from all the preceding pieces along with vocal and theatrical elements.”
This event is part of the MIT Sounding Series presented by CAST, The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and MIT Music and Theater Arts.
