Brad Mehldau - Fantasy & Reveries

Originally commissioned by Jeremy Denk, Fantasy for Piano was written in the same period as Mehldau’s Three Pieces After Bach. Fourteen Reveries, similar to the composer’s Suite: April 2020, comprises a collection of shorter pieces. 

“Fantasy for Piano ... shares similar obsessions with Three Pieces After Bach: long, extended pedal-points, sharp juxtapositions between triadic consonance and extreme dissonance, and a freely subdivided 7/4 meter,” Mehldau says in his liner note. “It is written very densely, and the challenge is often to convey the melodic storyline within a very thick texture.

“In Fourteen Reveries, I’ve eschewed larger-scale development, opting for brevity. Each piece is more like a distillation of emotion,” he continues. “As the ‘reverie’ description suggests, the music might accompany those moments during waking hours, when we withdraw from our exterior environment. Reverie can be welcome, perhaps as a diversion from the banality of one’s surroundings. At other times, it is an involuntary flight into melancholy. In all cases, it is an interior experience, exclusive to our own consciousness, independent from others. The music accordingly expresses solitude—at turns enraptured, placid, nervous, lonely or ecstatic.”