Q.   How did you come to specialize in 20th-century music?

A.  My first major piano teacher, Isabelle Sant'Ambrogio, introduced me to 20th-century music by means of Walter Piston and Paul Creston while I was growing up back East. It didn't do much for me then. My interest was piqued just after I had spent a post-grad year in Paris. I came back to L.A. because my friends from UCLA were here. While biding my time as a secretary, Don Davis, a UCLA schoolmate and now a well-known film composer (The Matrix), asked me to play his new piano piece. It called for inside-the-piano plucking and harmonics, and note combinations the likes of which I had never played before. It really stretched me and I realized I was capable of learning it and that I enjoyed it. It was a slow process of getting to know the music compared to learning standard repertoire, but I liked the process of navigating totally unfamiliar terrain and finding myself in a new and fascinating world.

Q.  The piano has reinvented itself throughout its 300-year history. How is the piano reinventing itself for the 21st century?

A.  Composers today are continuing to find new ways to use the capabilities of the piano, but it's a real headache for them. Many composers I know are very intimidated by the piano because they feel they have so much great literature to measure up to. What can they say with the piano when Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and so many others have said it all? It's difficult, and yet great works are continually being written. Thomas Adès is a new discovery for me, to cite one example. His "Still Sorrowing", which I'm performing for my third time in September, is astoundingly gorgeous.

Q.  What are some steps to take for the traditional pianist whose ear is tuned to the classics but who is open to exploring 20th-century music?

A.  There are excellent collections out for pianists just starting to explore comtemporary music. G. Schirmer has an American Masters series that features short, intermediate level pieces. The Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book from Boosey & Hawkes is geared toward amateurs and students. There is a CD included with the volume whereby you can pick out a piece you like and check it out as performed by Ursula Oppens. My advice is to keep an open mind, listen to lots of music, go to concerts, buy CDs, and keep on seeking; you're bound to find a lot to like out there and you'll develop your powers of discrimination.

Q.  When you were a student at Stanford pursuing a double major of music and economics, you had to juggle your music studies with other educational priorities. What advice would you give to an amateur who is juggling piano practice with other daily priorities.

A.  Regularity is very important. Concentrated effort is also necessary, with an aim to improve and solve problems during each and every practice session. Twenty minutes can do wonders. I find that if I simply keep at it, I wake up one day a month later and realize how far I've come. I know and trust that if I'm regular and focused, improvement just happens. There's no substitute for practice, and the learning can't be crammed in one day. Practice takes patience and discipline, but if we're enjoying ourselves then those things come naturally. For amateurs, the main point is to enjoy oneself. Once the notes are learned, the idea is to live with it, understand it, own it, love it, nurture it. That's the most fun and the most infinite part of the process.

Q.  Do you spend as much time thinking about a piece away from the piano as you do practicing it at the piano?

A.  Yes, but not always consciously. Time away from the keyboard is often the time when everything is percolating most productively.

Q.  Many amateurs get terribly nervous about playing in public. What would you suggest to them to overcome their fear?

A. One needs to keep things in perspective: a recital is not a life or death situation! Try to keep in mind that the audience is there because they like you and they've come out to share in a wonderful musical experience; so the nice thing to do is to just give them a good time. The other thing to keep in mind is that you are not important, the music is what is important. When I can forget myself and inhabit the piece and just become one with it, then my own problems, hang-ups and ego disappear, which is as it should be.

Q.  Do you strive to reach that place in your practice?

A.  Yes. Once I'm fluent with a piece it's where I try to go every time I play it. The goal in making music well is to reduce detachment and maximize involvement. That's why we practice, to get beyond our technical, ideological, and egotistical issues in order to become one with the music. That's what makes a performance committed, moving, and compelling.

Q.  On your most current CD, "Piano Dance: A 20th-Century Portrait" (Telarc 80549), you play a piece by Don Davis that was originally written for a motion picture. Why did you request that it be adapted for solo piano?

A.  A very simple answer. I needed a mambo and he had one. I was trying to represent as many dance forms as possible from the range of the 20th century. I already had tangos by Stravinsky and Barber, a rigaudon by Prokofiev, waltzes by Ravel and Ornstein, a shimmy by Hindemith, a polka by Martinu. I lacked a mambo and Don had one. It just wasn't arranged for piano yet!

Q.  Composers today are faced with the challenge of communicating their ideas to a public being pulled in many directions. How do you approach 20th-century music and what do you suggest to audiences?

A. We all have different ways of communicating. We have private thoughts that we articulate in our own unique ways. Likewise, each composer's musical language is highly personal and unique, and it requires attentiveness and respect from us in order to understand it. Composers cultivate their means of communicating their inner world to the outer world. The Beatles instantly appealed to a huge segment of society. Elliott Carter appeals to a much smaller segment. In my case, I never doubted that my inability to understand the music of Carter or Pierre Boulez was my shortcoming, not theirs. It was my job to educate myself and get to the point where I could make some sense out of this. My world has invariably grown bigger and more interesting each time for having done so. In the case where I'm working on a world premiere and I've never heard the piece, I have to just dive in and hope that four or five months later I'll have unlocked the door to a soundworld I've never been taken to before. Nine times out of ten, there's something, if not quite a lot, to like about it. Some pieces become lifelong loves, some become great friends, some we never want to see again. The process takes commitment and faith. There is something this composer is trying to say and it's my job to find out what. It's hard work, but that's the case for anything that has any depth or meaning. Nowadays there are musical languages proliferating in great numbers, all uniquely trying to communicate something. The more openness we can show in the face of a new encounter, the richer our lives become. It's like being given a choice to lead one's life as a hermit or amongst many friends and acquaintances that one has actively cultivated. I know what I'd choose.

Gloria's CD "Piano Dance: A 20th-Century Portrait" (Telarc 80549) is available at Telarc.com or at other online outlets and stores where Telarc CDs are sold.

Gloria Cheng Bio

Gloria Cheng has appeared as a soloist and chamber artist at major festivals worldwide. She is a favorite guest artist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its New Music Group, having twice been featured with the New Music Group at Alice Tully Hall, and with the L.A. Philhormonic in December 1998, performing Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques and Couleurs de la cité céleste under the baton of Zubin Mehta. An audition for the Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain led to her engagement at the 1989 Ojai Festival, and again in 1992 and 1996, as a featured soloist at the invitation of Music Director Pierre Boulez. She has concertized in China, Europe, and nationwide, and appears annually on the Piano Spheres series in Pasadena, California. The composers who have written for her include John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Don Davis, Joan Huang, David Raksin, Terry Riley, Chinary Ung, Andrew Waggoner, and most recently, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Ms. Cheng's solo recordings include music by Olivier Messiaen on Koch, and works of John Adams and Terry Riley on Telarc. Her latest Telarc CD, "Piano Dance: A 20th-Century Portrait", was released in July, 2000. Ms. Cheng holds an Economics degree from Stanford University, and graduate degrees in Music from UCLA and USC. Her major teachers were Isabelle Sant'Ambrogio, Aube Tzerko, and John Perry.

Learning from the knowledge and experience of seasoned professionals like Gloria Cheng is one of the many benefits Piano Forte News has to offer. The Professional Perspective column offers insights from experienced professionals that will guide the amateur on his or her journey toward mastery.

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