🎶✨ ICYMI: Stefania de Kenessey on Music, Poetry & Connection

16 Oct 2025 · 2 min

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This content was created by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This content was uploaded by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This is a YouTube clip titled "🎶✨ ICYMI: Stefania de Kenessey on Music, Poetry & Connection" (published 2025-10-16) excerpted from Season 6, Episode 3 of The Piano Pod. The audio contains an interview-style segment in which a composer (identified in the excerpt as Stefania De Canessi / metadata as Stefania de Kenessey) describes the genesis of an album of short piano pieces (a set of 19 miniatures inspired by Bartók's Microcosmos, written during the pandemic as accessible pieces for younger players) and a short promotional announcer segment referencing the episode and where to watch/listen.

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So Mikrovits, the album is 3 versions of Mikrovits, and the genesis of Mikrovits actually goes back quite a ways to the pandemic when I was locked up in the apartment that you kindly visited for many months and feeling kind of depressed about my future because I thought, I'm a classical musician, I write almost exclusively concert music, concerts are not going to be happening, it's the end of my life, you know. So I was really quite quite depressed for a while. And then I started to come out of it, and I thought of all the people, especially younger players, who are sitting at home locked up also. And I thought, wouldn't it be lovely to write them something that they could practice, that they could enjoy practicing and just have fun with? And I thought back on my own childhood, and I grew up on Bartók's Microcosmos, and I always loved those, but they're fairly naughty pieces. You know, they are not that easy to digest. And, you know, I went to music school and I come from a Hungarian background. So for me, it was relatively easygoing, but I'm not sure they're that easy for young American audiences or pianists. So I thought, well, what if I did something like that with a more contemporary, more American, more loving flair, if that's the right way to put it. So I wrote 19 miniatures, 19 short pieces that connect to one another but can also be played separately. That do form an arc from beginning to end, but also are a book from which you can extract exercises that go from relatively simple to relatively complex. So it mirrors the Bartók Microcosmos in that sense, except they're more tuneful, frankly, and more American-ish, if that's the right adjective for it. And I just had a beautiful time writing them, and I felt my spirit soar, and I felt like I was giving something to the world again. And that felt very, very satisfying.
In case you missed it, Season 6, Episode 3 of The Piano Pod is live. Composer Stefania De Canessi's Microbits: 90 Miniatures That Became a Boundless World of Music, Poetry, and Film. Watch this episode now on YouTube or listen anywhere you listen to your podcasts. Follow and subscribe to The Piano Pod, where tradition meets innovation in classical piano.