Outside the door of his studio, Steven Smith's voice can scarcely be heard over the flats and sharps of Mozart played by a student preparing for an upcoming performance.
"Louder! Louder!" he instructs. The feverish playing proceeds. A few bars more and the lesson is over. The door swings back and Smith leads his pupil into the hallway.
With a warm smile, Smith, a professor of music at Penn State, greets his next appointment and presents his studio. Music books are haphazardly stacked like old newspapers bundled for disposal. An array of beige chairs and piano benches, black vinyl dimpled stools, offer comfortable seating. Two grand pianos monopolize the left side of the studio, massive ink-black, enameled objects, their lids opened, strings exposed. A section of poster-board bearing miniature replicas of sheet music rests atop Smith's Steinway B. In the center of the keyboard, where the keys meet the polished body, there are scratches where the finish has been chipped away, as if frantic fingers, caught up in the passion of the music, have pecked at the frame.
Here is where Smith samples new pieces for his concerts. Here he prepares for the first New York performance of David Fetherolf's Ballade no.1, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." In this pleasantly cluttered room, he practices "Boréal," a piece written specifically for him by Antoine Tisné.
Some pianists are interested in music which requires that they alter the sound of the piano by "preparing" it. As directed by the scores, they manipulate the instrument, putting objects like paper clips or nuts and bolts on the strings. Smith, though interested in contemporary music, is not one of these performers. "I want to become appreciated for something different," he says, "but I concentrate on effective music, music that takes the resources of the piano and makes it work well."
One of the pieces Smith says complements the piano as an instrument is "Feux d'artifice-Tombeau" by contemporary composer Don Freund. "Shuttle explodes: seven feared dead," is written below the title. Smith's hands, which bounce off the keyboard when he plays, pause as he explains the video-image quality of the piece. Each note sounds electric: Visions of neon lights in race-car red and firefly yellow come to mind. "The piece was written after the Challenger disaster," Smith says. "The composer experienced it by watching TV and the event really affected him." His hands separate to plink keys at the end of the keyboard, only to rejoin in a split second at middle C. "Scary, isn't it?" he asks during a pause barely long enough for his left hand to float up, seemingly helium-filled, from the ebony and ivory keys, then pound down for the climax. Fortissimo!
Freund's "Feux d'artifice-Tombeau" is just one of the many pieces that has captured Smith's attention during his years of research and performances. He's been studying contemporary piano music for 25 years, and playing the instrument for twice as long. He was first introduced to music through his three sisters, each of whom had a favorite piece she would play for him when he was growing up. The piece he recalls most vividly is Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Perhaps this early exposure accounts for his interest in the more well-known classics, which he continues to play. But contemporary classical music, like that created by Freund, is Smith's current forte. It's what sets him apart.
"Everyone wants to play Beethoven and Bach and Liszt, which I love too," Smith explains, "but nobody wants to play the newer composers and I've found that I like a lot of them. Some of the composers I play aren't even famous yet. Some of their works aren't even published—composers send them to me, or publishers send me advance copies. So I have to look at the scores, play the music, and see what I like. That really gives me the opportunity to break new ground."
It's hard to convince most pianists and audiences that they'll like the newer compositions. Says Smith, "People want to hear the classics, and the term contemporary conjures up the sounds associated with pop music, or worse, the extreme dissonances of the avant-garde." What Smith has discovered is that composers are getting tired of writing music that appeals only to the most esoteric audience. They're trying to coax their audiences into appreciating a wider range of contemporary music. However, according to Smith, "It's even difficult to interest some people in Stravinsky." So contemporary composers are mixing in a little jazz or ragtime, slowly introducing the "vocabulary of pop music."
As a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music, Smith studied French composers as well as the classics. Following his studies at Eastman, he began to play the music of friends like John Beall and Freund, and focused his attention on other American and German contemporaries. In 1994, thanks to a grant from Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies and the College of Arts and Architecture, he was able to travel to England to study contemporary British composers. Since then, he has concentrated on introducing these British composers, who he says rely on a more lyric and choral tradition and are not quite as experimental as Americans.
As a teacher, Smith must divide his time between the five to ten performances he gives each year, and those of his students. Practicing for programs such as "Piano Entente," a solo festival performed in State College, at Indiana University, and at Merkin Concert Hall in New York, can require anywhere from 20 to 200 hours of practice. And when his student's performance dates approach, Smith devotes countless hours to helping them polish their programs. As he reaches the climax of Freund's piece, the rapturous expression on his face makes it clear why Smith leaves the composing up to Beall, Rochberg, Fetherolf, and Stravinsky. "Composing took away from my piano practice," is all he says. By choosing contemporary music for his performances, he is playing pieces that have never been performed before. When he sits down at the piano, an original score by a fresh composer confronting him, Smith feels he really has the opportunity to create.
Steven Herbert Smith, D.M.A., is professor of music in the School of Music, 233 Music Building, University Park, PA 16802; 814-863-4401. His performances of new music have received support from Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies and the College of Arts and Architecture.