Frederic Rzewski - ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated!’

There’s a scant handful of 20th century classical composers who directly addressed revolutionary politics in their music: Luigi Nono, Cornelius Cardew and, best of all in my opinion, Rzewski. His response to the dictatorship in Chile was this epic set of variations on ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! [see above]. It has formal precedents (Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations), but a unique and passionate breadth of invention, ranging from the most delicate statement of the theme, to crashing, dissonant contortions, with the pianist slamming down the lid. Its final variation is entirely improvised, as if to suggest the pianist has not only survived the preceding onslaught, but emerged with renewed creativity and power.
Leo Chadburn