The People United Will Never Be Defeated New York Performances

Frederic Rzewski’s *The People United Will Never Be Defeated* is a long-form piano work built as a chain of 36 variations on a Chilean protest song associated with solidarity movements under dictatorship. First heard in 1976 and closely linked to pianist Ursula Oppens, it brings political material into the concert hall without turning it into programmatic narrative. At David Geffen Hall, it appears alongside Beethoven’s *Eroica* under Gustavo Dudamel, placing two different ideas of public music in dialogue. Its significance in New York is less about a single local premiere than its durable place in the city’s tradition of socially alert modernism.