Composer/pianist Timo Andres was due to make his Carnegie Hall recital debut in Zankel Hall on April 29 of this year. The program was meant to feature several pieces from the new album I Still Play, out this coming Friday, as well as works by Robin Holcomb, Frederic Rzewski, Copland, and more. When the concert was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Andres filmed himself performing each piece on the program from home, and released the concert via his YouTube channel the night it was meant to have taken place. You can now watch the performances, introduced by a video liner note he recorded for the occasion, here:

"One of the strange things about this concert," Andres wrote on his website for the playlist's premiere, "was that it began with the idea of a living room, and it’s ended up in one. The original impetus behind it was a set of piano pieces collectively called I Still Play, which were written for former Nonesuch Records president Bob Hurwitz as a retirement gift from 11 Nonesuch artists. Though the pieces were written with the idea that Bob might enjoy practicing them at home, we ended up premiering them at the big BAM opera house, and they’ve gone on to lead active public lives since.

"But of course, [now] they’ve returned home, where they’re likely to remain for the time being. When I got word that Carnegie Hall would be closed ... I was disappointed but hardly surprised—I’d been dreading the email as I watched cancellations pile up. What do you do when a day you’ve been anticipating, with an odd mixture of fear and joy, nervous excitement, and, I’ll admit, pride, for years—suddenly becomes a regular day?"

He later goes on to say: "What I most missed was the chance to share the work I’d already done. I’d devised a varied and interesting program, focusing on some of the American piano literature I love the most."

Of his decision to capture the performances as recorded videos and share them on YouTube, he explains: "I wanted to make it in this slow, methodical way, rather than as a livestream, because it seemed like a chance for the documentation to become part of the process—not only the preparation for a kind of high-wire act that the public never gets to see, but a record of what life has been in confinement. It also afforded me a chance to shift perspectives. Now that audiences are virtual, I could be my own test audience. I was in two places at once, literally—at the piano, but also behind the camera and microphones.

"The music has taken on new depth during that process ... I love it all even more now. Each of the I Still Play pieces is a little conversational gem, distilling an aspect of its author’s voice into a concentrated nugget."

You can read Andres's full note on his website, andres.com, where you can also purchase the score to the piece he wrote for I Still Play, "Wise Words."