Stecher & Horowitz: Commissions

Melvin Stecher and Norman Horowitz, the acclaimed American piano duo known as Stecher & Horowitz since 1951, are equally celebrated in the world of music education. Every two years, the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation, an outgrowth of the Stecher and Horowitz School for the Arts, hosts the New York International Piano Competition in Manhattan, open to pianists ages 16-21 from all over the world. Since 2006, the Foundation has commissioned a new solo piano work for each competition, which every participating pianist is required to perform. These commissions, written by important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, are presented on this Steinway & Sons album (STNS 30079), some for the first time, in performance by past prize-winners of the New York International Piano Competition.

The commissioned works take inspiration from the sparkling Pacific Ocean (Michael Torke’s Bays of Huatulco) and the mysterious geoglyphs of the Nazcas in ancient Peru (Gabriela Lena Frank’s Nocturno Nazqueño). They draw from the works of Gyorgi Ligeti and Conlon Nancarrow (Avner Dorman’s Three Etudes), the sound worlds of blues and jazz (John Musto’s Improvisation and Fugue), and they take traditional forms in surprising new directions (Michael Brown’s Suite for Piano and Lowell Liebermann’s Two Impromptus). The performers on the recording became intimately familiar with these works as contestants in the New York International Piano Competition; most of them were either first-prize winners or recipients of the prize for best performance of a commissioned work – or both. One special guest performer on the album is Leann Osterkamp, whose recording of the complete solo piano works of Leonard Bernstein was released on the Steinway & Sons label in 2017.

Rounding out the album is the premiere recording of Walter Piston’s Concerto for Two Pianos, originally commissioned for Stecher & Horowitz. The original composition for piano duo and orchestra received its premiere in 1964, but Piston, inspired by Stecher & Horowitz’s brilliant performance, decided to rework the piece for two solo pianos to enable them to perform it more often. The two-piano version is less an arrangement of the original concerto than a complete rethinking of the score; it stands on its own as an important addition to the repertoire for piano duo. This first recording features NYIPC winners Larry Weng and Matthew Graybil.

Track List

• Lowell Liebermann: Two Impromptus, Op. 131, performed by Aristo Sham
  
  • No. 1, Limpido con molto rubato
  • No. 2, Molto lento e sereno
• Micheal Torke: Blue Pacific performed by Charlie Albright
• Gabriela Lena Frank: Nocturno Nazqueño performed by Daniel Kim
• Avner Dorman: 3 Études performed by Mackenzie Melemed
  
  • No. 1, Snakes & Ladders
  • No. 2, Funeral March
  • No. 3, Sundrops over Windy Water
• John Musto: Improvisation and Fugue, performed by Leann Osterkamp
  
  • Improvisation
  • Fugue
• Michael Stephen Brown: Piano Suite, performed by Anna Han
  
  • I. Prelude
  • II. Chant
  • III. Fugue
  • IV. Finale