Classical Pianist Interprets Radiohead

03/18/2005 9:39 PM, Reuters
Anastasia Tsioulcas

Fans of Radiohead take their love of the band very seriously. Classical pianist Christopher O'Riley, however, has taken his admiration further.

O'Riley has recorded two full albums of Radiohead transcriptions for solo piano. His latest CD, "Hold Me to This," will be released by Harmonia Mundi's World Village imprint April 12. The new album, which follows 2003's "True Love Waits" (released on Sony Classical Odyssey), features many of the band's B-sides and rarities.

"I'm not arranging these songs just to have arranged them," says O'Riley, who also hosts the Public Radio International syndicated show "From the Top," which showcases young classical musicians from across the United States. "I'm doing the best I can to approximate the energy of a full rock band. And that's really always been part of the conceit and the seduction of piano reductions or arrangements of any kind of music. That possible range of color, and vitality, is the same thing that drives, say, Liszt's transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies."

"Hold Me to This" isn't O'Riley's only new Radiohead project; the pianist is also publishing all the arrangements he has recorded on both of his transcription albums in a striking LP-size book (available through his Web site, christopheroriley.com).

"It's an incredibly beautiful book," O'Riley raves. "It's really a collaboration with Steve Byram, who designed the package for both of my Radiohead discs; for this book, he created incredible art for every page. I think it will be attractive as a work of art on its own."

O'Riley's tastes are famously diverse, and his repertoire ranges from Beethoven to new music by Aaron Jay Kernis to collaborations with tango pianist Pablo Ziegler. "I've continually been writing arrangements," O'Riley says. "I'm not just doing Radiohead, but also other artists. Right now, I'm hard at work at a lot of Elliott Smith 's songs. The common thread is what sends chills down my spine.

"There are two qualities in particular that really get me excited: harmony and texture," O'Riley notes. "In the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues I'm currently playing, for example, it's the fugal texture that gets under my skin. In Radiohead, each band member contributes one integral part of the puzzle in every song, which is a very contrapuntal way of making music. That, in turn, is part of what makes Radiohead so attractive for piano arrangements," he adds. "The varied texture means that you have different threads to pull together."

In fact, O'Riley has been pairing the Shostakovich with Radiohead in his live performances. He says that with this kind of genre fluidity, playing each style undoubtedly influences the other in his work.

"Given that classical music involves a very wide repertoire and a very broad vocabulary of compositional material," he muses, "that background informs everything I play in a very good way. In turn, the Radiohead stuff encourages the spontaneity and kineticism of my performances. It's definitely a two-way street."

Reuters/Billboard