Keys to the City traces the piano writing of Tobias Picker through seven works, most of them in first recordings, played by Ursula Oppens. It runs from the virtuoso Four Etudes for Ursula to the two-piano version of the title work, in which the composer joins her at the second instrument.
Picker, an American composer born in 1954, is a native of New York City. Schott quotes the Wall Street Journal, which called him "our finest composer for the lyric stage", and BBC Music Magazine, which heard in his work "a distinctively soulful style that is one of the glories of the current musical scene." The disc was recorded in September and October 2007 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Judith Sherman produced and engineered it, Norman Ryan was executive producer, and Picker wrote the liner notes, printed in English and German. The cover art is by Heinz-Jürgen Kropp, and the booklet photographs are by Christian Steiner and Harry Heleotis.
The Four Etudes for Ursula set virtuoso challenges across fifteen minutes. Old and Lost Rivers and The Blue Hula appear in versions for piano and belong, with ... when soft voices die ..., to the lyrical, simpler side of his writing that Schott points to. ... when soft voices die ... is the longest solo work at almost fifteen minutes. The Three Pieces for Piano frame a long central Liberamente with a short Svelto and a short Feroce, and Where the Rivers Go lasts about six minutes. Keys to the City, in its version for two pianos, closes the programme with nineteen minutes of what Schott calls a jazzy, urbane landscape.
Schott expects the release to make a lasting contribution to the discography of contemporary American music, since most of this piano music had not been recorded before. It also gives a rare chance to hear Picker as a performer. The order of the programme moves from the demanding etudes through the quieter river pieces and the short Hawaiian-titled miniature to the city portrait at the end.
CD, Wergo WER 6695 2, released in 2008. Total running time 72'10".
