Georges Aperghis

Georges Aperghis is probably still not much associated, by the public that internationally attends performances of his works, with music for solo piano. Music-theatre – of an uncommonly original kind, with extended vocal techniques much to the fore – has usually been his stamping ground. The concerns that his operas and other music-theatre compositions have embraced – often focusing around a highly individual approach to words and to all aspects of language, developed with great musical sophistication, resulting in what one might call a kind of sound poetry – are not among those immediately linked to the note-against-note preoccupations of which one tends to think where music for the piano is involved. This instrument’s 88 keys, and the two hands of its (usually firmly seated) keyboard operative, are normally engaged to less obviously ‘theatrical’ ends.

excerpt form liner notes by Keith Potter