Études, Book I (2024)
For solo piano
Duration: 11 minutes
Commissioned by Alicia Floyd (No. 1) and Deborah and Charles Adelman (Nos. 2 & 3)
World premiere: March 31, 2025
Sheslow Auditorium, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa
Winston Choi, piano
NYC premiere: December 13, 2025
Tenri Cultural Institute
Jonathan Howard Katz, piano
To puchase a hard copy of the score, please click here.
To purchase a PDF of the score, please click here.
Program note: This is the first installment of a project I have long wanted to undertake. As a pianist and as a composer who has written extensively for the piano, a series of études is a vehicle for exploring the instrument more deeply, even codifying my approach to it. I view each piece as addressing one or more questions relating not only to piano technique but to harmony, texture, color, image, rhythm, process, or form. The first étude evokes a sense of echo, with one hand leading and the other hand responding as a hazy reflection, slower and more diffuse. My sense of the second étude is of building a logical, steady scaffold from which increasingly chaotic figures scurry from point to point, eventually taking over. The third étude is a more traditional perpetual-motion study, but the asymmetrical meter ensures that it’s always slightly off-kilter.