"Before college, when I was asked what I wanted to be, I said 'I have no idea, but I'm certain I don't want to be a pianist.'" Many would find this a surprising statement, considering that it comes from one of the world's most renowned concert pianists, Ursula Oppens, who currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Music at The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. Oppens could read music by the time she was three years old. Both of her parents were musicians, and her mother was one of her first piano teachers. Because music permeated her youth, she was understandably eager to explore other possibilities as an adult. When she arrived at Harvard University (officially, Radcliffe) in the 1960s, she majored in English literature, and studied widely in economics. But the more she explored, the more she was drawn back to her true calling. "It was only when I had the option of something else that I realized how much I loved music," she says.
Though there were few performers at Harvard at that time, Leon Kirchner, the eminent American composer, had just joined the faculty. His presence (and a performance of Stravinsky's Les Noces that he conducted) had a profound effect on Oppens. "Until I was in college, I played standard repertoire," she says. "It was very exciting to find that there were composers right next to me, and they weren't all European!" After Harvard, she earned an M.S. at Juilliard and subsequently went on to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. Making her New York City debut while still in her early 20s, she played, among other pieces, a work by the contemporary composer John Harbison.
Though considered one of the finest interpreters of the established repertoire, Oppens has perhaps had her greatest impact as a champion of contemporary classical music. She has premiered works by Harbison as well as a host of other celebrated composers—among them Tobias Picker, Conlon Nancarrow, Charles Wuorinen, Joan Tower, Tania León, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Julius Hemphill, Gyöergy Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, and Alvin Singleton. Her reputation has been built upon well-reviewed appearances with virtually all of the world's major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and at major festivals in places like Aspen, Tanglewood, and Edinburgh.
Oppens credits her success as an artist largely to some outstanding teachers she had along the way, such as Felix Galimir and Rosina Lhévinne. "Galimir was an associate of Schoenberg's," she says, "and he gave me an understanding of what 20th century music expresses and how it expresses it. Lhévinne was a very liberating force. She enabled her students to have confidence, and even though she wasn't in any way a scholar, she told her students where to look for information." Equally influential were some of the composers she has worked with, such as two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Elliott Carter, whose work she has also premiered.
Oppens first heard Carter's music in the summer of 1961 in Aspen, when the Juilliard String Quartet played his String Quartet No. 2. A lecture and demonstration elucidated the performance. "They broke it down, so one heard all the elements of it," she says, adding that the experience was "indelible." In 1966, at the Marlborough Music Festival, a Carter piece for flute, oboe, cello, and harpsichord was programmed more or less at the last minute. Though she considered herself "by far the worst pianist there," Oppens sensed that there was a need and volunteered to play the harpsichord. A few years later, a strikingly similar situation arose at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Carter, who was in attendance, must have thought highly of her performance at Marlborough because, in this instance, he recommended Oppens to play the harpsichord. Since then, the two have maintained a close professional and personal bond. In 2008, Oppens happily participated in the international celebration of her friend's 100th birthday - an event that featured performances of Carter's music by many artists in cities around the world.
A work by Carter was central to what Oppens considers one of the "highlight experiences" of her career—rehearsing and performing his Piano Concerto with the Austrian conductor Michael Gielen. The piece is "from Carter's most complicated phase," Oppens explains, and Gielen, a composer himself, is known for his mastery of complex contemporary scores. "He brought the playing of the orchestra to a different level," she says, "and the piece then became a different piece for me." She has performed the work, with Gielen conducting, in places as diverse as Cincinnati and Baden-Baden, and they've twice recorded it together.
Oppens has also played an important role in contemporary music by commissioning new works, and this process too has been an education for her. Having heard Frederic Rzewski's group improvise "wildly atonal, experimental music," she commissioned him to compose what ultimately became the Grammy-nominated The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, an hour-long set of variations that is, Oppens says, in certain ways, tonal. "It wasn't anything like what I expected," she explains. "Then I realized that as a performer, I always imagined the composer's last piece, but they are going to give me their next piece. I realized that being surprised is part of it, and that's very exciting for me."
Oppens finds surprises not only in contemporary pieces, but also in traditional works that she returns to after a period of years. "One always goes back to the Beethoven sonatas and the works of Schumann," she says. "How can one not go back to them?"
After forty years on the concert stage, Oppens says that her greatest challenge in performing is the same one she faced at the beginning of her career—playing by memory. "It's something that every musician experiences and some overcome better than others," she says. When playing chamber music (with sheet music accessible), she is not as nervous. As a founding member of Speculum Musicae, a highly regarded chamber ensemble dedicated to contemporary classical music, Oppens knows and loves the form. She and fellow musicians started the group in 1971 at the urging of composer Charles Wuorinen. "The greatest pleasures are music and friends," she says, "and chamber music is making music with your friends. It's about the best thing one can do."
Oppens' career is as vibrant as ever, but it's fair to say that her legacy has already been secured through two means—recording and teaching. Among the recordings she is most proud of are the recent Oppens Plays Carter (the complete piano music of Elliott Carter) and Keys to the City (the complete piano music of Tobias Picker), as well as the Grammy-nominated American Piano Music of Our Time, a two-volume set that features works by Elliott Carter, John Adams, Conlon Nancarrow, and others. "It took most of my life to learn all that repertoire so, in a way, these recordings are summations," she says. The Carter compilation was named on the "Best of 2008" list of The New York Times.
Though she didn't start teaching until she was 50, Oppens enjoys passing on what she knows to the next generation. "Practicing the piano is something you do by yourself, and touring as a soloist is something you do by yourself. Teaching is something you do with other people, so it's very different," she says. "And I'm teaching adults, so my students become my colleagues. I see them performing all over the place." After more than a decade at Northwestern University in Illinois, she joined the faculty of The Graduate Center and the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College in 2008. Of The Graduate Center she says, "I really enjoy being at a place where there is a serious theory component, a serious musicology component, and a serious composition component." Oppens is certain that her late parents would have been proud of her current academic appointment. Originally from Germany and Hungary, they emigrated from Prague in 1938. In their eyes, she explains, "to be a professor at the City University of New York was just the highest dream one could have."
As much as she has accomplished, Oppens cannot envision a day when her work will be done. "I'm always learning new music—both newly written music and music that is new to me. This process—the process of doing something in a concentrated fashion every day, really focusing on it and getting better at it—is interesting. And the huge variety of music! I'll never finish."
—Gail Goldberg
Photo by Hillary Scott
