Bryce Dessner on...

• his piano concerto

  Alice Sara Ott simply wrote to me asking if I could compose a piano concerto for her. That was wonderful because I know her playing and am a fan of her work. She is a very open-minded pianist with incredible technical abilities and, more importantly, a very profound artist. She gave me free rein and trusted me from the very beginning. The piece has become a kind of portrait of her. I imagined her qualities as a pianist and tried to find things that would challenge and inspire her. So it's primarily a concerto for Alice.

  While working on the piano concerto, I also thought a lot about my older sister Jessica, a dancer and choreographer who had a huge artistic influence on my brother Erin and me when we were growing up together. She has been dealing with health issues for the past seven years. I incorporated a lot of her dancing energy into the piece so that it conveys a real sense of movement. There is also a lot of joy in it, because my sister always looks ahead to see the beauty and greater meaning in things. That's the feeling I want the piece to convey....

• his violin concerto

  When I was writing my violin concerto, I read Anne Carson's “Anthropology of Water” about the Camino de Santiago. In her works, she often draws inspiration from ancient forms, which she then adapts. I thought about the process of composing and why we are so often drawn to these ancient forms. Why do we write violin concertos when there are already great monumental ones? A pilgrimage is always about following a path that many others have taken before you. It enables personal discoveries, is a conversation with the past, and also allows you to shed light on the future. That is exactly what composing this piece has given me.

  Pekka Kuusisto, for whom it was written, is an extraordinary Finnish violinist, conductor, and an old friend of mine. He studies a new concerto almost every year and plays a lot of new and electronic music. The challenge for me was to find a space he hadn't yet entered. I think I succeeded: part of the piece rises to stratospheric heights, there is complex melodic material, and it contains all kinds of extended techniques, including difficult ensemble passages. The first movement is like a Baroque concerto, the second has an almost operatic quality. It is a democratic concerto, because every string player has a solo, which is entirely in keeping with Pekka's ideas: why write a concerto like one from the 19th century for a single “hero” as soloist?

• his string quartet “Aheym”

  The string quartet “Aheym” [Yiddish for “going home”], which will be performed by the Quatuor Zaïde at the Konzerthaus, was composed around 15 years ago for the Kronos Quartet – at a time when my grandmother Sarah Dessner was in hospital. She died about six months later at the age of 96. Her mother tongue was Yiddish. She grew up in an Ashkenazi family from Poland and Ukraine during a period when the October Revolution was taking place in Eastern Europe and there was a lot of violence. She came to New York City as a teenager in the 1920s. She was a very kind woman who lost many of her relatives in the 1940s. I really wrote the piece for her. It premiered in Brooklyn, where she spent her last years. Then it was performed in Łódź, where her parents came from. So the music was literally brought home. We were always told how frightening her journey to America was for a young girl. Among other things, she had to hide in the trunk of cars – a story of escape that is very relevant today, given the crises that are causing enormous human suffering all over the world.

• his cello concerto

  Among the instruments, the cello was my first love. With the cello concerto for Anastasia Kobekina, I wanted to write something that was closer to a tone poem – a cello symphony, a piece that takes you on a poetic journey. It's called “Trembling Earth.” Anastasia recorded music for my current solo album, and a musical friendship quickly developed. I think she's almost 20 years younger than me, incredibly curious, extremely creative, plays at the highest technical level – and is a big Radiohead fan. I was surprised by that and think it's great. 

Clip: Bryce Dessner about his residency

Bryce Dessner and Tobias Rempe in conversation

concerts