A written score can tell you which notes to play while leaving a surprisingly large question unresolved: which of them should the listener follow? Brad Mehldau’s Fantasy & Reveries offers a useful way into that question. Three official scrolling-score videos let you hear the pianist-composer’s performance while following the notation.
The full album is scheduled for 13 November 2026 on Nonesuch. This preview uses the already released Fantasy for Piano and the first two Reveries, together with Mehldau’s published explanations. It is a guide to the music and its score resources, rather than a review of the unreleased complete album.
Featured photograph: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels. Illustrative piano photograph; neither the pianist nor the score pictured is Mehldau’s.
Start with a short piece and one line to follow
The album programme combines Fantasy for Piano with Fourteen Reveries. The first Reverie lasts 1:41, making it a manageable place to begin if a page full of piano notation feels busy. Let it play once before trying to inspect every mark.
For the second pass, follow the shape of a line you hear as a melody. Notice where your attention goes, then see how that line sits within the notation. You do not need to name every pitch to recognise whether something rises, falls, repeats or seems to continue across a change beneath it.
Mehldau’s own programme note for Cal Performances identifies an idea in Reveries 1, 2 and 9: a melody embedded within the surrounding figuration. The melodic voice belongs to the texture rather than always standing apart from it.
That is a useful distinction for a pianist. A hand can contain both a note you want to bring forward and notes that support it. Playing everything in the right hand louder is therefore not always the same thing as making the melody clear. Our post on practising voicing at the piano explains that problem in more detail.
Try changing what you follow. On another pass, attend to the surrounding movement instead of the melody. Then return to the line you followed first. Does the same passage seem organised differently when your attention shifts?
The second Reverie makes metre part of the question
Reverie 2 is shorter still, listed at 1:30. In the same programme note, Mehldau identifies its 5/8 metre, also used in No. 9. That gives a reader a specific feature to investigate without reducing the music to a counting exercise.
A 5/8 bar contains five quaver units. Those units can be organised into smaller groups, but a time signature alone does not tell you where every phrase should lean. A possible counting pattern such as two plus three is a way to understand five units; it is not a prescription to accent this piece in that pattern.
Watch how the notated movement and the line you hear relate. Does a phrase seem to finish at a barline, or continue through it? Can you keep a sense of the pulse while attending to the melody rather than counting out loud?
If reading both staves at once becomes distracting, follow a smaller part of the page. It is reasonable to listen once without looking, then return to the score with one question. The video is useful precisely because you can revisit the same short span.
The Fantasy asks for a longer view
Fantasy for Piano, originally commissioned by Jeremy Denk, lasts 11:12 on the album. Nonesuch places its composition alongside Mehldau’s Three Pieces After Bach. In the label’s account, Mehldau describes dense writing, extended pedal points, shifts between consonance and dissonance, and a freely subdivided 7/4 metre.
The official Fantasy score video was released in October. Approach it with more patience than the two short previews: choose one musical layer to follow, then let the larger span unfold.
Three terms from the composer’s description can help you know what to look for:
- Pedal point
- A note held or repeated while the surrounding harmony changes. It describes a musical relationship, not simply a direction to press the piano’s sustain pedal. Follow what remains stable and what moves around it.
- Dense texture
- Several active notes or layers may compete for attention. Try following the bass on one pass and a melodic line on another; seeing many notes is different from knowing which one carries the phrase.
- 7/4 metre
- Seven crotchet units fill a bar. Smaller groupings can help organise them, but the phrase need not advertise every division equally. Follow the written grouping and the musical direction rather than imposing an unchanging accent pattern.
Use the composer’s description as a starting point. If a passage catches your attention, use the visible score to find your way back: what is the bass doing, which line holds your attention, and what changes when you follow another part?
Some of the most interesting instructions are omissions
Mehldau’s programme note discusses Brahms as a model for music that gives an interpreter considerable information while leaving inner lines to discover. He explains that his own writing sometimes marks those lines explicitly and sometimes lets the player choose what to reveal.
His description of Reverie 14 takes that freedom further: dynamics, time signature and barlines are omitted, while the performer is invited to find melodies inside the figuration. This is the composer’s account of the written piece; it is not a listening verdict on the forthcoming album track.
For someone used to treating the score as a complete set of performance instructions, that raises a productive question. If a dynamic is not printed, how will you decide what the listener should hear? The absence of a marking does not remove the need for a musical choice.
You can investigate the same issue in music you already know. Take a short texture with more than one possible line, choose one voice to foreground, and record that version. Then try another balance. Compare whether the phrase becomes clearer or merely louder. Keep the experiment small enough that you can remember what you changed.
Where to get the actual piano music
A scrolling-score video is useful for following a performance, but it is not a printable edition. Mehldau’s official sheet-music page directs readers to JoAnn Kane Music Service.
Its Fourteen Reveries edition is listed as a piano PDF supplied by email, priced at US$49.95 when checked on 10 November 2026, before any applicable tax. That is the score collection, not the album purchase or a licence to redistribute its pages. Check the current offer before ordering.
Preview the music before deciding whether you want to study it at the instrument. Short duration does not establish easy reading or easy voicing. The three videos give you a way to explore the writing without buying a score solely because the word reverie sounds gentle.
For another recording approached through the earlier lives of its music, see Jess Gillam’s Shine. Here, the connection is between composer, page and performer: even when the composer is the person at the piano, the score leaves room for decisions another player will have to make.
