About this work:
Twenty-two salon pieces for two pianos, opus 66.
Commissioned and premiered by the Reed Sisters - Betty and Lydia.
Performances by Robert Levin and Ya-fei Chuang at Yale University's Beinecke Library and the Sally Pinkas-Evan Hirsch Duo at Dartmouth College.
Program note. The literature for two pianos is vast and varied. Major contributions have been composed by Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Poulenc, Gottschalk and Messiaen. When the Reed sisters, Elizabeth & Lydia, asked me to write a new work for two pianos, I wasn't quite sure where or how to begin. Then I came upon a book on numerology by Annemarie Schimmel, "The Mystery of Numbers." In it I discovered a lot of fascinating things, mystical and magical, associated with each number from one to 10,000. Since I would be writing a piece for a duo, double digits would do the trick. Number 22 stood out. It has two important associations: the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, and there are 22 major arcana cards or "allegories" of the Tarot. Perfect! I could write 22 pieces, each a musical rendering of a card. [And, coincidentally, this is opus 66.] For pictorial inspiration, I bought a Pierpont Morgan Library copy of the Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards from 15th century Italy. For musical inspiration, I listened to the wonderful salon music of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, the American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and the Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth.