Piano Sonata, Philip Glass

Piano Sonata, Philip Glass, 2019
Piano: Maki Namekawa
Realtime Visualization: Cori O’Lan
Piano Sonata by Philip Glass has been commissioned by Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Ars Electronica, Philharmonie de Paris,
Performances at Ars Electronica 2019 and Tokyo Midtown Festival 2020 were supported by Yamaha.
In 2020 Maki Namekawa recorded the Piano Sonata for CD

Here is a live-video from the performance at the Ars Electronica Home Delivery Concerts on March 12th, 2021

Photos from the performance at Tokyo Midtown Festival, Feb 2020 (with a smaller 2screen setup)

Photos from the performance at Ars Electronica 2019, 09.09.2019 (with a large 3screen wide setup)

about the music:
“The Sonata is colorful, wild, excitingly jumpy…” – with these words Malte Hemmerich begins his review of the premiere of Philip Glass’s latest work at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr on July 4th 2019 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He further continues “… it is a prime example of Philip Glass’s piano music with its opposing rhythms, and there are also many other familiar elements from the composer’s etudes and individual works. In such a wild kaleidoscope, however, they appear here for the first time.
It is Glass’s most demanding piano work to date; the rapid succession of virtuoso octave jumps are close to the limit of playability. Namekawa breathes this music, the piece is an example of how an incomparable unity can arise from the close collaboration between composer and interpreter.”

Screenshots:

1. Movement