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There was the time when he devoted a significant portion of his $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award to commissioning new piano music from composers across jazz and classical music, placing Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau alongside Oliver Knussen and Alexander Goehr.

There was a significant amount of music from veterans of the American experimental scene: Augusta Read Thomas’s “Sun Dance — In memoriam Oliver Knussen” and George E. Lewis’s “Weathering.”

Anderson completed “Litanies” in 2019, several months after the fire and a year after the death of his close friend Oliver Knussen, the influential composer and conductor.

Knussen’s death also influenced the work.

It takes special performers to make his music as palatable as Boulez, Uchida and Oliver Knussen have shown it can be.