With Her, New and Old Get Equal Time

When last the Southland caught sight and sound of Ursula Oppens, she was wired.

Last October, as part of the Eclectic Orange Festival in Costa Mesa, Oppens harnessed her beloved piano to the power of digital manipulation and customized computer software written by composer Richard Teitelbaum. Her playing was filtered, via MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), through a computer, affecting the behavior of a phantom duet “partner” on Disklavier (a computerized player piano).

“I’d like to develop it further,” Oppens says of her recent MIDI encounter. Even so, she admits that “most of my interests are still in playing the piano on the keys, in the regular old-fashioned way.”

That “old-fashioned way” will be Oppens’ operative mode when she lands at USC this week to play a Beethoven-meets-contemporary-music recital on Monday night and to appear as soloist with the Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble on Thursday. That program includes Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (with Los Angeles’ own new-music champion, Vicki Ray, on the other keyboard), and a new piece by noted Chinese emigre composer Chen Yi.

Which of her roles represents the real Oppens? Either and both. By this point, Oppens has to be considered one of America’s most well-rounded virtuosos. She has played more standard repertory in recent years, yet she also maintains her affection for experimentation, which led her to co-found, in the early ‘70s, the influential new-music group Speculum Musicae.

Her recital program Monday will interweave Beethoven sonatas and contemporary pieces without apology. Living composers important to Oppens’ musical life will be featured: As well as Chen Yi, there will be the oft-touted “dean of American composers,” Elliott Carter, and pianist-composer Frederic Rzewski, whose 1975 piece “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” won Oppens one of her two Grammy nominations.

The program will include works by these composers that were part of an Oppens project, the “Carnegie Hall Millennial Piano Book,” which commissioned short pieces from 10 prominent composers. Oppens premiered them last spring, and music publisher Boosey & Hawkes released a book with CD late last year.

Oppens has also maintained an academic roost since 1995, when she became the John Evans Distinguished Professor of Music at Northwestern University near Chicago, to which she commutes from her home in Manhattan. Oppens says she’s “really happy with the balance” in her musical life. “There’s a lot of playing, some teaching, too much airplane travel. But aside from that, it’s great.”

Question: It almost seemed predestined that you’d get into music. But you decided to study literature and economics at Radcliffe before plunging into music at Juilliard. Were you bucking expectation?

Answer: Yes. Both my parents are musicians, they were very grounded in classical music and yet involved in 20th century music. But exactly for that reason, when I was 17 and people asked me what I wanted to do, I’d say, “I don’t know, but I’m certain I don’t want to be a musician.”

Q: A byproduct of adolescence?

A: Or a need to find some space for myself. And I’m very happy I studied other things in college. Northwestern [also] encourages people to do that. It’s an academic university with a school of music. I come across a lot of people who are studying two things. I’m very much for it.

Q: Was there a particular point when it became obvious to you that music would, in fact, be your life?

A: It was in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; there were a couple of things, like winning the Busoni [International Piano] competition [in 1969]. It was also founding Speculum Musicae. I think it was not only doing new music, but also having a group where we were trying to make every aspect of the concert situation happen, not be passive and hope that somebody else would hire you. We wanted to create the concerts, to put them on. That was very, very exciting.

Q: The 1970s were an exciting, transitional time for new music in New York. Did you sense a cultural birth, or rebirth, going on?

A: The ‘70s in New York City was a wonderful time. One exciting thing was that we could do it. We could form a group and people would come. Actually, it’s still happening. There is the eighth blackbird [a contemporary music ensemble in Manhattan], for instance. They’re young and starting, and playing all over the place, and people seem to love them. It always happens. One always thinks, ‘It was that period, or some other golden age,’ but it might just be around the corner too.

Q: You’re playing a Rzewski piece at your USC recital. How far back do you go with his music?

A: I met him in 1974, when we were panelists for the New York State Council of the Arts. I’d heard a great deal about him before that, but I hadn’t really heard him, either as a pianist or as a composer. But I then got to know both sides of him, and heard Musica Elettronica Viva [an improvisational ensemble Rzewski was part of] a lot.

Shortly after that I was offered the chance to commission somebody, because of the bicentennial. So there it was. It’s kind of odd, because the music I had heard of his was quite dissonant, especially the improvisation. So I was a little bit surprised when I received “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.” In a way, it was a piece that presaged some of the return to using tonal materials. But it was a great piece, so I’ve been playing a lot of his music since then. He has written tons of piano music. In fact, this piece [on the USC program], “The Days Fly By,” is a portion of a four-hour-long piece he’s writing called “The Road.” But it’s also a piece by itself.

Q: He would seem a kindred soul with you, in that his ears go in so many different directions. Is that true?

A: Yes, and I would say I have been hugely influenced by him. He was one of the people who got me to listen to improvisation and jazz, things that I really had not listened to very much. He did get me to expand my ears.

Q: How long have you been presenting recital programs combining Beethoven sonatas and contemporary music? Why did that practice begin?

A: It started four years ago, and this year I will finally get through all of the Beethoven sonatas. It was an idea I had, partially selfishly. I thought, ‘If I want to do it, I shouldn’t put it off until I’m 70.’ I thought combining what we think of as the bedrock of piano sonatas, [although] each sonata is new and inventive, with music of our time would be fun, for me and for a listener.

Q: Are there elements in each of those two musical camps that you find resonant? Is there any kind of cross-talk in your approaches to the different music?

A: Sometimes I’ve done programs where there were really pointed connections. Actually, for my last program, a colleague of mine at Northwestern named Bill Karlins wrote a piece for me [using] thematic bits of material from Opus 111. So, of course, I play that on the same program with his piece. I played the Carter Sonata on the same program with the “Hammerklavier,” both of which have quite massive fugues--the Carter is not as large, but still fugal.

This program [at USC] is not so much about that. This is more middle Beethoven and, in that sense, a slightly lighter view of things. And when I started this program, I had no idea that “Millennium Piano Book” would come into being. I remember in the beginning, saying, “Well, sometime near the end, I’ll play some pieces that haven’t even been written yet.”

Q: Considering that project, did you get swept up in pondering the century just waning?

A: What I liked about this project was that it was on a small scale instead of being monumental. So, yes and no.

Q: In the 1970s, you were linked to contemporary music because of your passionate advocacy. Did that became a claustrophobic role for you?

A: I actually never stopped playing classical music. There’s always a little bit of a difference between what is newsworthy, what people will make a fuss about, and what you’re actually doing. [Laughs.] It’s more newsworthy that you’re playing a world premiere than that you’re playing the Chopin Preludes. So the perception has also been a little bit skewed, [compared with] the reality.

I think things have changed now, that one really is less surprised by someone who plays both.

Q: Do you think the lines are less fixed in the audience’s mind?

A: I hope so. Partially, the fact that a lot of the new music being written now is less dissonant, and certainly there’s less 12-tone music, makes it more accessible to an audience. I think that is not a bad thing.

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URSULA OPPENS recital, Alfred Newman Hall, USC. Date: Monday, 7 p.m. Prices: $5-$20. Also: Oppens plays with the Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble, Thursday, 7 p.m., Alfred Newman Hall, USC, $4-$7. For information on both concerts, call (213) 740-7111.