Login

Enter your username and password

Forgotten your username or password?

Your Shopping Cart

There are no items in your shopping cart.

Work

Tast-en (solo piano)

by Elena Kats-Chernin (1991)

Score Sample

View a sample of the score of this work

Audio Sample

Performance by Lisa Moore from the CD Stroke

Selected products featuring this work — Display all products (2 more)

Stroke

$23.00

Add to cart

CD

Stroke / Lisa Moore.

Library shelf no. CD 226 [Available for loan]

Tast-en

$27.27

Add to cart

Score

Tast-en : for piano solo / Elena Kats-Chernin.

Library shelf no. Q 786.2/KAT 2 [Available for loan]

Display all products featuring this work (2 more)  

Work Overview

Tast-en, written in 1991, marked the end of my self-imposed five year break from composing for concert hall. I was living in Germany at the time. I stopped writing for concert hall, due to a couple of reasons: lack of motivation or direction, also prevailing interest in collaborations, i.e. writing music for theatre and dance productions, bringing up small children, etc...
A good friend of mine, Hermann Kretzschmar from Ensemble Modern approached me in 1990 to write him a piece for an upcoming concert in Hanover. After a couple of weak excuses, saying "I was out of practice writing concert music, I did not feel secure about it", etc... he kept persuading me to try writing it. One day I just sat down and decided to start, with just one note (F sharp, appropriatly lying in the middle between two C's) and see where that would take me. I must have been inspired by a piece by Kurtag, based on a one note.
One note did not feel like enough to go on, so I split it into octaves over the whole keyboard (monstrously hard to play for a pianist!), to make a note last longer. I felt that the next step would be to enter another note- I chose a dominant to the F sharp, the C sharp. Then that pattern is broken up by a played interval of fifth (D-A), after which the piece started to take shape and develop into a kind of a fantasia with a chorale.
Due to its incredible demands on the pianist, only exceptional pianists like Hermann Kretzschmar and Lisa Moore took the task upon themselves to perform this piece. Lisa recorded it in her CD "Stroke" (Tall Poppies CD label).

Work Details

Year: 1991

Instrumentation: Piano.

Duration: 11 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Professional

Commission note: Commissioned by Hermann Krefszhmar.

First performance: by Lisa Moore — Aug 93. Studio 200, ABC

Performances of this work

13 Dec 2011: at Lisa Moore (Melbourne Recital Centre, Primrose Potter Salon). Featuring Lisa Moore.

22 Feb 09: Olin Hall, Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA. Featuring Lisa Moore.

1991: featuring Hermann Krefszhmar.

User reviews

Be the first to share your thoughts, opinions and insights about this work.

To post a comment please login.