A.  Messiaen composed the Preludes as a 20-year-old student of Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatoire, and yet his musical personality was already astonishingly well-defined. Some of Messiaen's lifelong signature techniques, like the modes of limited transposition, additive rhythms, and richly colored harmonies, already distinguish him from his mentors. Messiaen had regarded the set as a "collection of successive states of the soul and of personal feelings," and had intended in these early works, "for the first time, to contrast terrestrial life with eternal life." That's a tall order for oneself at the age of twenty and attests to a remarkable sense of his personal mission as an artist and human being.

Q.  What makes Stravinsky's Sonate (1924) ever fresh and curious to 21st Century audiences?

A.  In the Sonate Stravinsky takes a wry look at the music of J.S. Bach, specifically the 2-Part Inventions. Though Stravinsky claimed Beethoven as his model for the Sonate, Prokofiev recognized the work's true provenance when he dismissed it as "Bach with pockmarks." The work's contrapuntal textures, level dynamics, and stable tempi do invoke Bach, or, as has been suggested, Bach as performed during the 1920's; Wanda Landowska was actively and singlehandedly (well, two-handedly!) leading the Bach revival from Paris at the time. Stravinsky's tribute to Bach is loving, playful, and ironic, and is, as Prokofiev observed, a woeful imitation of Bach. But therein lies our challenge: to recognize and appreciate Stravinsky's bone-dry wit. The ways in which he fails to write like the old master are whimsical, ingenious, and delightful.

Q.  Salonen's Dichotomie has evolved from a short encore piece to a substantial work in two contrasting movements, with recent revisions that we'll hear for the first time. How has the piece evolved to its present form?

A.  Esa-Pekka found that the potential contained in his ideas for the piece could not be contained in anything but a full-scale concert work. The first movement, entitled Mecanisme, is full of humor; Esa-Pekka has likened its character to that of a playful machine. I find that this machine also has some unwittingly brilliant ideas and when no one is looking, will really rock. The revisions that Esa-Pekka made since last December's premiere have enhanced this frenzied side. The second movement, entitled Organisme, is a gorgeous unfolding of radiant harmonies that at times invoke Ravel, Adams and M.C. Escher. I have special affection for this piece as it was a gift out of the blue from a friend whom I deeply admire.

Q.  Piano Spheres commissioned That Is, Already... (1999), a work by Berkeley composer Jorge Liderman that you will play in a world premiere. What distinctive qualities does this new work bring to the piano repertoire?

A.  Jorge Liderman writes music with a slightly eccentric twist--the syntax is always rather quirky. In That Is, Already..., he is exploring the notion of continuous discontinuity, which is something we experience on many levels in our lives. In each movement he varies the relationship between fragmentary musical processes and continuous ones. In describing the piece to me Jorge lent some insight into his enigmatic title: "The work is about the unexpected and unresolved. It is about fleeting thoughts, and that is where the title
That Is, Already... comes from: that is (a musical idea), it is (already) gone. " I've never asked Jorge, but I sense that he might find a kindred spirit in Elliott Carter, who also creates music that seeks to parallel our thought processes--I'm thinking of Night Fantasies in particular. Though Jorge's compositional approach is nothing like Carter's, I find both approaches to be fascinating as musical analogues to the workings of the brain.