Frederic Rzewski

The first woman to record Frederic Rzewski's setting of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, Bang on a Can/Steve Reich pianist Lisa Moore sheds powerful new light on Wilde's jailhouse meditation on imprisonment, debasement, and the barriers that he faced as a homosexual.   Rzewski, a revolutionary American composer with associations in both the modern classical and avant-jazz worlds, has created an aggressively emotional soundtrack to Wilde's moving prose. De Profundis breaks down the boundaries between a piano recital and a theatrical experience. Written for a virtuosic pianist who also sings, shouts, and declaims, Rzewski's masterpiece is given a gripping re-interpretation by Moore, who brings a new character to the work through her passionate piano performance and compelling voice. Using her expertise beyond the field of classical music, Moore is one of the few pianists besides Rzewski himself to dig into the improvisations of North American Ballads, giving beautifully simple performances of Rzewski's arrangements of American spirituals.

   "Lisa Moore gave a startlingly good performance: she was lustrous at the keyboard, and at once engaging and challenging." – Paul Griffiths, The New York Times, on hearing Moore perform De Profundis