Rzewski’s Variations on Dark Political Times

Pianist Ran Dank (from the San Francisco Performances event page for last night’s concert)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances presented the first of four concerts to be performed on the four consecutive evenings of the 2019 PIVOT Series. The opening program was given by Israeli pianist Ran Dank playing a single composition whose duration tends to run roughly an hour, Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” The work is a set of 36 variations on the Chilean song “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!,” composed by Sergio Ortega working with the Chilean folk music group Quilapayún. Rzewski composed it on a commission from pianist Ursula Oppens, who gave the world premiere performance on February 7, 1976.

Rzewski’s choice of a theme is sufficiently political to deserve a bit of context. It had been composed as an anthem for the Popular United (Unidad Popular) coalition in Chile that was instrumental in the 1970 election of Salvador Allende as the country’s president. Allende was the first Marxist to win an election in a democratic country; and, as might be guessed, his election through indisputable democratic means made the United States more than a little nervous. As also might be guessed, Allende’s administration did not last very long. It was brought down in a coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. (Note that date.) Allende committed suicide, and it was no secret that the Central Intelligence Agency supported the coup with planning assistance from Henry Kissinger. To this day the United States is still not a member of the International Criminal Court, and all efforts to bring Kissinger before that court have been futile.

As far as the music is concerned, Rzewski’s composition was as ingenious and inventive in the twentieth century as the extended compositions of variations by both Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms had been in the nineteenth. Indeed, those who write about this piece tend to overflow with references to composers from both the twentieth century and earlier periods. However, while listening to Dank’s performance last night, I realized that there was one composer that I had never encountered in these “roll calls,” Sergei Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff was not only wildly imaginative in his approach to variation but he also knew how to twist his theme to add new themes to the mix. Rzewski may not have been as skilled at twisting; but he drew upon the theme’s political context to add citations of two other significant anthems, the Italian socialist song “Bandiera Rossa” and Hans Eisler’s “Solidarity Song,” setting the words of Bertolt Brecht.

From a structural point of view, there is a mathematical elegance to the overall plan of Rzewski’s composition. The theme itself is 36 measures in duration. Rzewski thus conceived 36 variations on that theme, organized into six groups of six. The final variation is followed by an improvisation, after which the theme returns as it was originally stated. That overall framework parallels the conclusion of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 “Goldberg” variations (whose variations happen to be organized as ten sets of three).

None of this background, however, prepares the listener for just how demanding the virtuosity of Rzewski’s expressiveness is. In the booklet for the HAT HUT recording of Rzewski himself playing the variations, Tom Johnson makes passing reference to the composer’s “post-Webern textures.” This verges on the height of understatement. Many of Rzewski’s variations involve mind-bending acts of deconstruction through which the individual notes of the theme are splayed out across the entire length of the keyboard. However, as the variations progress, each of those isolated points is subjected not only to finger-busting embellishments but also whistling by the performer (along with one slam of the piano lid). By the time the variations have run their course, it feels as if Rzewski has explored every possible avenue for transforming pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and texture. Thus, when the theme returns in its original simplicity, there is a sense of closure that is downright exhilarating, rather like the high that some marathon runners experience at the finish line.