Being a pianist is a privilege. The piano is an instrument filled with endless possibilities, and an absurd amount of marvellous repertoire that is difficult to choose from. Yes, it can play many notes and do things that most instruments can’t, but it also has its downsides. The piano has an extremely complex mechanism: fingers activate a key, that moves a hammer, that hits a string. It’s a lot of steps from the moment you imagine a note and the moment you hear it, and it is somewhat disappointing when sometimes you hear something you’re not expecting to hear, or you’re unable to hear something you’re looking forward to hearing. This is my main struggle in being a pianist: not being able to control everything I want to hear, all the time. The piano can be a limited instrument for the things that are asked from pianists, such as pretending that we can play singing lines, legato lines, and being very expressive on, what is actually, a percussion instrument. However, there are ways of getting over this limitation, and one of them is the use of imagery:,i.e., having a strong imagination of something else in order to do things that, in many occasions on a piano, are technically impossible.  

This is how I came up with the idea for my research, trying to complement a mechanical fragility of the piano by thinking outside of it. In my practice, the way I try not to focus on this limitation is by thinking of landscapes, or metaphors, or places of meaning to myself, or by just thinking of orchestration, and imagining how other instruments could play certain phrases/motives of our repertoire. At this point, I had the idea of arranging a piano piece, in a way not only to complement a technical fragility but also to gain a wider and broader view of the piece, exploring the imagery elements I use in my piano practice and trying to turn them into something concrete, through the use of new layers added by the chosen instruments.  

For this experience I decided to work on a movement from the second book of Debussy’s Images, specifically: Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut. Debussy’s works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century and they have an original and unique approach in harmony, rhythm and musical structures. His music was truly connected with the rest of the artistic world in his time and truly communicates colours, symbols and emotions that we don’t often find in music, and that deeply resonates with me. Aligned with the idea of turning imagery into something concrete, I decided to keep the piano part and add musical layers with percussion instruments. I chose percussion instruments for their richness in timbre, rhythm and resonance, all characteristics that I try to highlight in my solo performances, and that are present and crucial in Debussy’s music. It might seem a bit contradictory to choose percussion instruments for an arrangement that aims to overcome the percussive nature of the piano, but the reason for this choice is mainly focused on the timbral features of those instruments, a sense of unity and balance with the piano and the extensive colour palette that this family of instruments can bring to the piece. It is also a paradox that interests me a lot and creates a certain mystery and suspense for the ending result. 

In the third and final chapter of the research I analyse my arrangement in detail and discuss the process of turning imagery elements into something concrete with the new layers added by the percussion instruments. In this part I will draw my conclusions and approach this topic in a more personal way, with the results of my own experience.