Three Preludes for Solo Piano By Adam Sherkin

RCO: Pappano conducts Beethoven & Schumann

January 2021 •Dutch

A Little Nightmare Music

January 2010 •French

The con­cert begins. The music is sub­lime. Not even a pin would dare drop. Sud­denly, a cell­phone rings and the mad­ness starts. The pianist loses his hand, the vio­lin­ist, while tun­ing, falls asleep, and later wakes up in the mid­dle of a motor­way, trans­formed into a “River­dancer”. When the pianist returns, the piano is locked, telling him to insert his credit card. Mean­while, the vio­lin­ist loses his bow to a vac­uum cleaner and his part­ner just talks on the phone while read­ing a paper, eat­ing, and, play­ing the piano upside down all at the same time. These and many other “night­mares” unfold before audi­ences’ eyes and ears. “A Lit­tle Night­mare Music” is a unique show, full of vir­tu­os­ity, enchant­ing music and zany, out­ra­geous humour. Ideal for audi­ences aged 8 to 88, this show is sure to cap­ti­vate you and crack you up whether you’re a clas­si­cal music enthu­si­ast or the type who runs for cover, at the mere men­tion of Mozart.

Blueprint

December 2003 •German

The story of the first cloned human being - told in her own words: At the age of thirty the world-famous composer Iris Sellin learns that she has an incurable illness. She - a person who wanted to live for ever - does however not give in. In order to preserve her art and also herself, beyond death, for all posterity, she has herself cloned. Her daughter Siri, whom, in this way, she turns into her virtual twin, learns as a child that she is the world's first cloned human being. In fact a blueprint: a blueprint of her mother. From that moment on nothing is as it was before...

Shine

August 1996 •English

Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.

Chilly Gonzales Presents: A Very Chilly Christmas Special

November 2020 •English

Pianist, entertainer and Grammy winner Chilly Gonzales performs traditional Christmas songs and new pop standards in this "Christmas Special." But there's no Christmas without family, so Gonzales has invited his musical gang to celebrate a special holiday with them. Because only together can they help Santa out of his impending depression. "A Very Chilly Christmas" takes the beloved old Christmas shows on TV as its model and subjects them to a contemporary makeover. For Santa, like all of us, has had an exhausting and challenging year. Overwhelmed by the world of goods and the consumer frenzy, he has to undergo therapy. So it's a good thing that Chilly Gonzales and his friends like Jarvis Cocker and Feist are on hand to help out musically. Because only together can they help Santa out of his impending depression and convince him to keep going - thus ending the year on a conciliatory note for him and all of us....

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

October 1962 •English

A former child star torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion.

A Ghost Story

April 2017 •English

Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife, only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away.

Las Meninas

January 2008 •Ukrainian

This film is about what the routine of everyday life can do to the human mind and psyche. It also reflects on the importance of the choices we make and how limited these choices are in the first place. The plot evolves around a family of four. They live in the suburbs, in a strange villa that appears, through a complex game of mirrors, to be more like a piece of installation art than a real house. The main character, who hardly appears on screen, is the son, a man in his thirties. Suffering from asthma and eczema since childhood, he uses his condition to manipulate his parents and his sister. Thus the existence of the terrorized family turns into an endless ritual of attempting to satisfy his whims, and always on the alert for yet another one of his “health crises”. Las Meninas resembles the scattered pieces of a puzzle. It is up to the viewer to assemble them in order to form his very own picture – something that makes the film itself personal and unique.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

March 2005 •French

A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.

The Piano Teacher

September 2001 •French

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

Horowitz at the White House

January 1978 •English

Piano Vladimir Horowitz in a televised recital from the White House on 26 January 1978, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his US debut, at the invitation of President & Mrs Carter. On the program, Chopin's Sonata #2 in B-flat minor, Waltzes in A minor and C-sharp minor, and Polonaise in A-flat, followed by encores by Schumann, Rachmaninoff, and Horowitz's own Carmen Variations.

The Piano Player

October 2002 •English

A tale about the relationship between a businessman who launders money for a Mafia figure and his gangster bodyguard.

Mr. Jones

October 1993 •English

The story about the relationship between a manic depressive man, Mr Jones, and the female doctor who takes more than a professional interest in his treatment.

Nocturne in Black

May 2016 •Arabic

In a war-ravaged Syrian neighborhood, a musician struggles to rebuild his piano after it is destroyed by terrorists.

Four Minutes

June 2006 •German

Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.

The House of Forgetfulness

December 2020 •Persian

The Journey of a young man who is making a documentary about forgotten narratives around an old piano, takes him through an unknown path towards restoring history, culture and identity of his homeland, Iran, in dusty and abandoned objects.

The New Music

October 2019 •English

After a Parkinson's diagnosis a classically trained pianist embarks on a path of self discovery leading him to a punk band. Their rebellious lifestyle and music provide a distraction to his troubles and a sharp contrast to his old life.

Maestro

Invalid date •English

Set against the backdrop of a 1960s jungle seaport in tropical Australia and the rich concert halls of wintry Vienna, talented eighteen year old pianist Paul Crabbe moves to an exotic outpost of far Northern Australia. There, he is forced to study under the only piano teacher his father can find – the eccentric, enigmatic Herr Keller, a Viennese refugee with a shadowed past. Living above a dilapidated hotel in the dripping heat of this seaport, Keller is known to the locals as 'Maestro', a broken, elegant drunkard. But who is he? Does he come from a lineage of great European pianists, or is he a fraud?

Music and Lyrics

February 2007 •English

A washed-up '80s pop star gets a chance at a comeback when reigning pop diva Cora Corman invites him to write & record a duet with her, but there's a problem--Alex hasn't written a song in years; he's never written lyrics and he has to come up with a hit in a matter of days.

The Piano

May 1993 •English

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.