Michael Finnissy - Complete Piano Works (Series of live performances supplied on USB with contextual information)
- Submitting institution
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City, University of London
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 1391
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- City, University of London
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- February
- Year of first performance
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- My eleven-concert 2016-17 series of the complete piano works of Michael Finnissy, celebrating his 70th birthday, was the first to present his entire piano output up to 2016. It built on my own six-concert series from 1996, which celebrated his 50th birthday. Over the intervening twenty years, Finnissy’s output for piano more than doubled in size and no other pianist has performed it in its entirety. It includes many works on which we collaborated, not only when preparing performances but also during the compositional process (e.g. much of The History of Photography in Sound, the Tangos, the Third Political Agenda), and which I subsequently premiered. The series thus entails a thoroughgoing re-conceptualisation and re-interpretation of this material on the basis of 25 years performing, writing and lecturing on Finnissy’s oeuvre. With works such as the Gershwin Arrangements and More Gershwin, of which I made the first complete recordings, this involved a fundamental shift of emphasis in terms of the twin categories of genre and mediation, alluding more explicitly to stylistic elements of pre-Finnissy performances and arrangements (for example Judy Garland’s performance of But Not For Me, or the Gershwin arrangements of Percy Grainger and Earl Wild). English Country-Tunes takes a drier, more brittle approach than Finnissy’s own recording, to make more explicit, for example, the reference to Boulez’s Structures II in the grace notes of the third movement. Elsewhere, distinctive approaches to voicing, articulation, rhythm, harmony, accentuation, and touch have been employed in line with the specific demands of each piece: e.g., to render Boogie-Woogie with an angular quality in line with the piece’s allusions to Jelly Roll Morton and Piet Mondrian. Each concert included extensive programmes notes written by myself (provided as contextual information), which built on my published articles on notation and performance relating to Finnissy’s piano works.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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