25 April 2018
The British Museum, London
Wednesday 25 April 2018, 15.00 – 17.00
This concert with pianist Marianne Schroeder in the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia features piano music by Giacinto Scelsi, who was influenced by Buddhism and Asian spiritual thought.
Scelsi spent hours every night continuously recording his own improvisations, and then, assisted by other composers editing these recordings, painstakingly adding detailed performance directions to the transcriptions. Schroeder studied with Scelsi and he gave her his entire piano work to perform and distribute it on records. Here she presents a programme that includes his I Capricci di TY (TY was Scelsi’s wife Dorothy), Rotativa and Four illustrations, which express the transformation of the ego, a process which can be seen in the ten transformations of Vishnu.
Marianne Schroeder grew up in Reiden in Switzerland and had her first piano lesson at the age of 7. She took part in several composition masterclasses (Maurizio Kagel, Klaus Huber) and studied for three years with Giacinto Scelsi in Rome. Scelsi handed over to her his entire piano work to perform and distribute it on records. In 1988 it was her special honour to premiere his piece Un petit Adieu on the 5-manual organ of Speyer Cathedral. John Cage recommended her for the entire version of the etudes australes and took part in the first performance in Perugia.