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RECITAL REVIEW New Piano Works Ably Premiered October 3, 2002
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By Jerry Kuderna
Everyone benefited on Thursday evening when no fewer than five new works received Bay Area premieres by pianist Marilyn Nonken at her local debut sponsored by San Francisco State University. Nonken was fully in command for all the formidable and varied challenges, both technical and musical, presented by her program.
Nonken warmed up with a couple of Etudes (2002) by David Rakowski. Sliding Scales is a wickedly funny parody of regimented piano practice, a manic Gradus ad Parnassum, beginning with scale patterns and gradually expanding intervals leading to some rather dangerous leaps which were executed with spectacular abandon. By way of contrast, Twelve-Step offers a counterpoint of lovely lyrical lines in the vein of Rakowski's earlier piece, Nocturnal, a favorite of mine.
Jason Eckardt's Echoes' White Veil (1996) exhibited an even more striking contrast of mood and texture. An extremely active and brilliant toccata-like section takes fire-breathing virtuosity to the limit, followed by an awesome silence where time seems to stop. A few mere wisps of sound were suspended in a state of almost total immobility, in reverse proportion to the density of the music which preceded it. The virtuoso music returns briefly before the veil is drawn again and the music ends quietly. Nonken gave a performance which went from controlled fury to eerie stillness, making the most of its dramatic impact.
Rather than the hymns and patriotic tunes which frequent the surface of Charles Ives' music, Michael Finnissy's North American Spirtuals (1998) draws instead on chorales by William Billings and tunes such as "Go Down Moses" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." I could imagine Ives leaving Danbury and wandering the Deep South. Just as in Ives' music, Finnissy loves to contrast extremes of uproarious complexity with utter simplicity and make the change emotionally convincing (and not merely abrupt). This was achieved admirably in Nonken's performance as she meandered and strode through this rhapsodic 20-minute piece. The music of Milton Babbitt, now in his 86th year, has an ageless quality. If the marvels of Babbitt's mind are most apparent in the way he structures pitch, surely his spirit dwells in his rhythm. If you can unify them, you get that wonderful combination: simply, Milton, as he is known and loved. His latest piano work, Allegro Penseroso (1999) gets its title from two of John Milton's poems. It combines the cheerful (Allegro) and the reflective (penseroso) — two of the most salient (non-technical) aspects of Babbitt's music. The piece begins with an almost off-hand series of notes in the upper register (prime) followed by its reflection (inversion) in the extreme bass. This is followed in each register by every possible combination and permutation of fragments from these two successions of intervals. Nonken gave an exemplary performance — one that projected the physical grace as well as dynamic and rhythmic intricacies of the music. A Collection of Caprices (2002) by Paul Nauert, a faculty member of UC Santa Cruz, seemed to sum up the musical delights of the evening. I enjoyed the concision of the writing in which he pays tribute to one of his mentors, the late Mel Powell. Nauert's harmonic language and ear for sonority held my interest from first note to last. In addition to a wide range of color, the work once again showed Nonken's ability to project the larger structures of the music, which takes her well beyond just the playing of the notes. It is flattering to performers to have pieces written with their particular abilities in mind, and certainly gratifying to their composers when they are played by their dedicatees with passion and conviction. Nonken's advocacy went a long way in allowing us to enter the worlds of each of the composers she presented. Her return to bring more new composers and music to the Bay Area will be welcome.
(Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who teaches at Diablo Valley College.)
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Marilyn Nonken