Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 01/28/2015, uploaded on 06/19/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Leonard Bernstein was perhaps one of the most successful and influential American musicians of the 20th century. He is best known as the long-time music director of the New York Philharmonic and the composer of West Side Story and Candide. His solo piano work Touches was composed in 1980 for the sixth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth. Bernstein gives his own definitions of “touches” in the score:

= (French) the keys of the keyboard.
= different “feels” of the fingers, hands, and arms: deep, light, percussive, gliding, floating, prolonged, caressing…
= small bits (cf., “a touch of garlic”); each variation is a soupçon, lasting from 20 to 100 seconds apiece.
= vignettes of discrete emotions: brief musical manifestations of being “touched”, or moved.
= gestures of love, especially between composer and performer, performer and listener…

The piece is in the form of a chorale, eight variations, and coda and was dedicated by Bernstein “To my first love, the keyboard.”          Garret Ross

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.