Sensational is the only way to describe the performance today and I have heard Ursula Oppens who commissioned it and Kholodenko in London recently. Both magnificent performances but today this impossible piece took wing as we sat mesmerised by a kaleidoscope of chameleonic colour and character that kept a rapt audience hypnotised by a tour de force of unbelievable mastery .A true mastery that of musical communication no matter what the odds
And after almost an hour a simple song without words to calm the earth shattering atmosphere .
Rzewski liked Mendelssohn Emanuil told me in the green room .
Of course but would Mendelssohn have like Rzewski !

Commissioned and first performed in 1975 by Ursula Oppens who passed by Siena to play to Agosti in 1968 before catching the train to Bolzano where she won the Busoni Competition.Emanuil won the Busoni Competition in 2019

This is an interview with Ursula Oppens : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uuarpS_u59Q. 

And to Jed Distler’s Between the Keys : https://soundcloud.com/jeddistler/episode-0032-the-people-united-at-40-2015-11-03?in=jeddistler/sets/between-the-keys-archive

The song on which the variations is based is one of many that emerged from the Unidad Popular  coalition in Chile between 1969 and 1973, prior to the overthrow of the Salvador Allende  government. Rzewski composed the variations in September and October 1975, as a tribute to the struggle of the Chilean people against the newly imposed repressive regime of Augusto Pinochet ; indeed the work contains allusions to other leftist struggles of the same and immediately preceding time, such as quotations from the Italian traditional socialist   song “Bandiera Rossa “ and the Bertold Brecht /Hans Eisler “Solidarity Song”

In general, the variations are short, and build up to climaxes of considerable force. The 36 variations, following the 36 bars of the tune, are in six groups of six. The pianist, in addition to needing a virtuoso technique, is required to whistle, slam the piano lid, and catch the after-vibrations of a loud attack as harmonics: all of these are “extended” techniques in 20th-century piano writing. Much of the work uses the language of 19th-century romanticism, but mixes this language with pandiatonic  tonality, modal writing, and serial techniques .

As in the Goldberg Variations , the final variation is a direct restatement of the original theme, intended to be heard with new significance after the long journey through the variations.

The Bulgarian pianist Emanuil Ivanov attracted international attention at the age of 21 after receiving the First Prize at the 2019 Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition. Known for his elegant performances of late Romantic music, he presents one of the most ambitious keyboard works of the 20th Century. The People United Will Never Be Defeated! builds its 36 glittering variations from a celebrated Chilean protest song, encompassing triumph and despair, intricate abstraction alongside jazzy improvisation – an unforgettable musical journey.

Frederic Anthony Rzewski
April 13, 1938 Westfield Massachusetts USA 
June 26, 2021 (aged 83) Montiano Italy 

Rzewski plays ‘The People United Will Never Be https://youtube.com/watch?v=xiWwYsWWVSk&feature=shared

Rzewski was born on April 13, 1938,to parents of Polish and Jewish descent,and raised Catholic.^[He began playing piano at age 5 and attended Phillips Academy Harvard and Princeton , where his teachers included Randall Thompson,Roger Sessions,Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt . In 1960, he went to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship where in addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element.

In 1966, Rzewski co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran  and Richard Teitelbaum in Rome which was conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments  prominently featured. In 1971, he returned to New York from Italy.

In 1977, Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège, Belgium, then directed by Henri Pousseur 

In 1963, Rzewski married Nicole Abbeloos; they had five children.While Rzewski never divorced Abbeloos, his companion for about the last 20 years of his life was Françoise Walot, with whom he had two children. He also had five grandchildren.Rzewski died of an apparent heart attack in Montiano Tuscany on June 26, 2021, at the age of 83.Nicola Slonimsky  said of Rzewski in 1993: “He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument.”Michael Schell called Rzewski “the most important living composer of piano music, and surely one of the dozen or so most important living American composers”.

Emanuil Ivanov a great pianist of humility and intelligence takes St.Mary’s by storm

Emanuil Ivanov premio Busoni 2019 Al British in the Harold Acton Library A room with a view of ravishing beauty and seduction

Emanuil Ivanov ‘Sensational’ recital of technical assurance and refined intelligence

Emanuil Ivanov in Capua the bells of their 100 churches tolling brightly -ignited by his mastery and dedication

Emanuil Ivanov at La Scala to the Glory of God and beyond

Vadim Kholodenko today of all days reminds us with artistry and mastery that ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated’