I’d like to share a few words about why the challenge of bringing music to life that has never before been heard is so important, and why I focus on it so much (as of this writing, I have performed or recorded world premieres of over fifty works in genres including solo piano, art song, chamber music, and concerto, and many of those works were pieces which I commissioned) and believe in it so deeply.
One of the great joys of doing new music lies in exploring something that has previously only existed in a composer’s mind. Another is in forming a close relationship with a composer, and in the case of music of rarified quality, sharing with the world for the very first time music that has a depth of meaning capable of changing the lives of those who listen to it.
Audiences and performers are sometimes reticent to embrace new music. This is understandable, as the familiar is comfortable. The familiar doesn’t challenge us to move outside the known. The familiar has been accepted by the masses and so one risks nothing in programming it. One doesn’t go out on a limb and risk a sort of artistic social-outcast identity in embracing something that, perhaps, only they themselves find value in. So, why risk the new?
Art that we look back upon and deem masterpiece was created by individuals who had been trained in the ways of their forebears, who valued tradition, but who also understood that their ancestors couldn’t say all that needed to be said. This is obvious - if their predecessors had said all that needed to be said, why would they have written new music? They honored the past, honored the spirits of those who came before in learning from them and taking in all that their culture could teach them, and then using that cultural treasure to move ahead and explore new frontiers.
They understood that the past - those artistic, cultural ancestors - can guide us, but cannot possibly give us the answers to all of today’s questions and challenges. Those artists who created the works we now consider masterpieces embraced the heroic creative spirit and took the risk to explore new territory. They did not hide within the safety of tradition, for if they had, they wouldn’t have created new masterpieces!
All of the music - the art - that we consider worthy of being called masterpiece now was art that, while it was informed by the past, broke new ground. If it hadn’t explored new territory it wouldn’t have found new meaning. It wouldn’t have become a masterpiece, because the unknown - the new ground - is where the new opportunities and the new meaning lie, is where we expand our understanding of life and what it is to be human, where we explore the mysteries and the wonders. And that new ground? That is where artists are called to journey. On the edge of what we know, daring to explore the uncharted, the dark forests of the subconscious and the beyond.
And, in fact, if we insist on only performing the great masterworks of the past, in some delusion that in this way we play the only truly “great” music, we completely miss the point, denying the spirit of those who created that art in the first place.
For those artists who created the works we now call masterpieces did so in a spirit of creative exploration. If we only play their work, we deny their spirit. For in order to embody their spirit, we must do as they did, and we must explore what lies beyond the known.
To truly understand their creative output at the deepest possible level, a level at which we may truly identify with their creativity, with the heroic, and the brave - to embody their spirit - we need to create and explore anew. We need to confront the mysteries that lie beyond the edge of the known and bring new music to life that otherwise would never be heard, and that someday might be looked at by future generations and called masterpiece.