Oni Buchanan’s “Symphonic Etudes” program gathers together a diverse group of fantastical piano etudes that well transcend their designation as “studies” and explore the piano’s sound at its most symphonic. Opening with a selection of etudes from the haunting and heart-stopping Rachmaninoff Etudes-Tableaux, the program detours into the enchanting, oriental landscapes of Debussy’s “Pour les Quartes,” the impetuous, mercurial bursts of witty aphorism in “Pour les Degrés chromatiques,” and the extroverted exuberance and pointillistic splendor of “Pour les Octaves.” The centerpiece of the program follows: Cindy Cox’s Hierosgamos casts a profound commentary back on the Rachmaninoff and Debussy works, and transforms the Schumann Symphonic Etudes, which will follow. Cox’s Seven Studies in Harmony and Resonance seem to occur on the brink of evolution – at the microscopic level of cell differentiation – at the same time as they draw from the most ancient well of melody and shared memory. After Cox’s moving inquiry into the vast potential of the vibrating strings and gathering overtones in the immense body of the instrument, the program culminates in Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes themselves, mournful yet dignified, and by turns introverted and virtuosic, teasing and pleading, expressive and deceptive, determined and anguished. The contradictions remain unresolved at the piece’s jubilant conclusion.

——-

Works to be performed on the “Symphonic Etudes” program include:

Rachmaninoff, Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 33, Nos. 2 (C major) and 4 (D minor), and Op. 39, No. 6 in A minor
Debussy, three works from Douze Etudes pour piano (Pour les Quartes, Pour les Degrés chromatiques, Pour les Octaves)
Cindy Cox, Hierosgamos: Seven Studies in Harmony and Resonance
Schumann, Symphonic Etudes

Program offered March and April, 2013.