Ballade

Description

Piano — Ballade is a one-movement work of approximately 11 minutes, divided into three main parts that are played without significant break.Ballade alternates sections where the performer is invited to apply great interpretive freedom, especially on the temporal plane, with contrasting sections that are quite precise and rhythmic. Although carefully notated, the “freer” sections (often marked rubato) certainly allude at times to the kind of repertoire that is familiar to most concert pianists, doing so not by way of quotation but by the type of expressivity, affect, and even passagework. Thus, the performer should think of the score as a “blueprint,” where the many descriptive words I have inserted throughout the score (ranging from sonorous, rubato, with great aplomb and resonance as the work begins, to with greater motion, in a series of ever-expanding “waves” later on) are intended to act as triggers for one’s sense of imagination and fantasy to take off and bring the music alive! An inscription in the score urges the pianist to play fearlessly and exuberantly, but also tenderly! This intriguing 11-minute work builds on alternations between declamatory unmetered phrases (beginning as “sonorous, rubato, with great aplomb and resonance”) and strictly motoric rhythmic sections, developing in waves of increasing drama and intensity. Commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation for pianist Xiaohui Yang’s Carnegie Hall premiere.