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This program spans two-and-a-quarter centuries of compositions that reflect a state of unusual spiritual solitude. A composer's solitary journey can lead to very different places, as each reflects the unique journey of the soul-and a work for solo piano can give perfect voice to such introspection, creating a complete world of sound. György Kurtág began his Játékok (Games) in the early 1970s. This series of ingenious miniatures first served as a cure for the composer's writer's block; it also aimed to be a new method of teaching piano, inspired by Bartók's Mikrokosmos. Kurtág started again from scratch, using basic building blocks of intervals, harmonies, and sometimes primitive methods of playing the instrument (palms, fists, forearms). As the cycle developed-there are now eight books-Kurtág started dedicating the pieces to close colleagues. When I worked with Mr. Kurtág in Darmstadt, Germany, he magically demonstrated, at the piano, some ideal phrasings. I was amazed, and humbled, by how much direction and energy he could convey in a single two-note melodic interval. Kurtág's profound expressive ability is hard-won, the result of much struggle. These varied pieces plumb every element of the music for complexity and effect. Mozart's well-known and endlessly mysterious Rondo in a minor is one of his most unusual solo piano pieces. Relentlessly chromatic, the work alternates between extremes of simplicity and density, often in quick succession. The piece formally adheres to a rondo, alternating a main idea with contrasting material. Notably, the emotional change the listener feels each time upon the theme's return is profound and complex the fragile melody is weighted by the memory of all that has come before. The piece concludes with a winding coda, and is capped by the simplest cadence imaginable. Schoenberg's 1923 Suite for Piano is the first large-scale twelve-ton
