Ursula Oppens - Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated & 4 Hands (2015)

New-music icon Ursula Oppens, who commissioned, premiered, and made the first- recording of maverick American composer Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a remarkable, monumental set of solo piano variations, has re-recorded that landmark 1975 work to mark its 40th anniversary. This riveting, audience-pleasing tour-de-force is a nearly hour-long set of 36 variations on a popular Chilean protest song from the era of Augusto Pinochet’s repressive right-wing military dictatorship. AllMusic.com applauds it as a work “of bewildering and amazing variety, ranging from serialism to jazz to romanticism to the further reaches of the avant-garde and back” and culminating in “a superbly emotional climax.”

Oppens’s world-premiere recording of The People United Will Never Be Defeated! was released in 1978 by Vanguard on analog LP and later reissued on CD. This new recording offers the advantages of Cedille’s 21st-century audiophile production values and an interpretation that benefits from Oppens’s four-decade association with the work. Another bonus is the world-premiere recording of a new Rzewski work, Four Hands, a duet commissioned by and written for Oppens and pianist Jerome Lowenthal, her duet partner on the recording. Fiercely challenging to perform, it leaves the listener “absorbed and exhilarated” (New York Times). Grove Music Online notes that Oppens “is known particularly for the intelligence, technical skill, and warmth she brings to her performances and recordings of contemporary music.” The Washington Post declared, “her rigorous, unforced performances again prove that few pianists of any era can claim a hold on contemporary piano music as she does.” When she performed The People United Will Never Be Defeated! at a 2011 Boston concert, the Boston Musical Intelligencer wrote, “the power and grace of Oppens’s performance was lost on very few.”

The album was produced and engineered by multiple Grammy-winner Judith Sherman. Oppens’s Cedille Records discography includes two Grammy nominees, Oppens plays Carter and Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano, and a recording of duo-piano music by Messiaen and Debussy with Jerome Lowenthal.