When
Where
Conrad Tao
Pianist extraordinaire Conrad Tao gives the World Premiere of Book of Flowers on the Kent Keyboard Series.
“Book of Flowers” is a collection of 16 short character pieces for piano. Each piece aims to capture a particular energy, from the playful and rhythmic, to the fragile and breakable, to the brutal and ferocious. My piano teacher Rebecca Penneys once commented that playing a Chopin Mazurka is like catching a butterfly: while imagining these pieces I often felt I was catching a fleeting sensation before it vanished, following it for a time, and then letting it go. In such thinking, vibrational quality takes priority over thorough development.
Book of Flowers owes its existence to its spiritual predecessors—Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Scriabin and Schoenberg—who all distilled their essences into concentrated, short works for the piano. The other inspiration for this work was Conrad Tao. It was thrilling and an honor to write for Tao, a formidable artist whose virtuosity is matched by his imagination and vital creative spirit as a pianist, in how he craft his programs, and as a composer.