Stephen Prutsman, a pianist, composer, and arranger, seems to think so. On a Sunday morning program he played Bach’s 24 preludes and fugues from the second book of Well-Tempered Clavier (ca. 1740). Prutsman’s recital fell within the “Carte Blanche” series of the Music at Menlo summer music festival. Artists who participate in this series, as its title suggests, have free reign in devising their programs.

Prutsman titled his recital “Bach and Forth,” and in it he moved back and forth, alternating between Bach’s preludes and fugues, and pieces by other composers. Prutsman’s program ran nearly two hours long in playing time alone. The audience enjoyed lunch during an extended intermission. But hungry versus full stomachs were hardly the only difference between the two halves of this extraordinary — not to mention extraordinarily well-performed — program.

In the first half, Prutsman alternated between Bach’s pieces and works by composers within the canon of Western art music. The interpolated composers dated from progressively later eras. A character piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau, a French composer who lived at about the same time as Bach, served as the first non-Bach piece. A movement from Arnold Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano (1923), a composition in which Schoenberg pioneered the 12-tone method of composition, served as the last. Other pieces that were interspersed between the Bach preludes and fugues included the Adagio from Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, compositions by Ravel and Scriabin, and a Liszt transcription of a piece by Wagner.

Prutsman performed all this music without ever pausing long enough for the audience to applaud. But while this first half was a concatenation of varied pieces, the second half was even more so. In the latter half, the remaining preludes and fugues alternated with jazz and folk songs. Prutsman himself penned their arrangements. They included Charlie Parker’s Ornithology; a tune by Purandara Dasa, a South Indian who was active mainly in the first half of the 16th century; a progressive rock number by the band Yes; and folk tunes from Uzbekistan and Rwanda.

Putting It Together

Throughout the program, which Prutsman performed entirely from memory, various connections linked the pieces. Key relationships numbered among them. The Scriabin and the ensuing Bach were linked by the common key of B-minor, for example. Motivic relationships provided still more unity, even in the second half. More abstractly, Prutsman explained that he understands embellishment or ornamentation as well as improvisation or quasi-improvisation to link Bach to jazz. Then again, he also said — perhaps only half jokingly — that he was using his “Carte Blanche” concert “as an excuse to play what I always wanted to play.”

Be that as it may, from the first alternation between Bach and Rameau through all the jazz, rock, and folk pieces in the program’s second half, Prutsman’s incredible musicianship was the most significant unifying factor for the program. From sensitive pianissimos to flashy, pounding virtuosic passages, or from the cerebral Bach to the visceral popular tunes, few musicians would have the wide range of ability to pull off this program.

In short, “Bach and Forth” was one of the more impressive recitals I have ever heard. This was partly due to the uniqueness of its programming, but also because Prutsman performed even the oft-played Bach pieces so engagingly that he captivated his audience for the entire duration of this lengthy program.

It might be argued that it is Bach’s universality — his enduring appeal to so many artists over such a long period — that makes him great. Prutsman showed that Bach’s relevance can reach beyond Western classical music to jazz, rock, and even world folk music. Regardless whether such widespread appeal does indeed testify to Bach’s greatness, Prutsman’s own fiercely comprehensive aptitude for playing “Bach and Forth” between such diverse music must surely testify to his.

Glover opened with three pieces of Nicolai Medtner: Improvisation in B-flat Minor and Funeral March in B Minor, Op. 31, Nos. 1 and 2 (1915), plus the Danza festival in D Major, Op. 38, No. 3 (1920). These he followed with Rachmaninov’s major problem child, the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 36 (1913-1931). Following intermission we heard Liszt’s Two Legends of 1863 (St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds, and St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Water), the earlier Benediction of God in Solitude from the “Poetic and Religious Harmonies” (1852), and finally the bravura Fantasy on Themes from Wagner’s Rienzi (1859). For an encore, Glover played Scriabin’s Prelude for the left hand in C-sharp Minor, Op. 9, No. 1 (1894). (The second of those two Scriabin “lefty” pieces is a Nocturne.)

Between his Opp. 30 and 40, Rachmaninov composed much of his most brilliant piano music. After all, those begin with the Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 30, and close with the Paganini Rhapsody, Op. 40. Between these two pillars stand the 13 Preludes of Op. 32, and the two books of Études-Tableaux, Opp. 33 and 36 — plus the weaker Sonata No. 2.

Rachmaninov wasn’t satisfied with the original 1913 version of the Sonata and worked on revising it until 1931. Mostly he largely shortened it, as he also had done with his performance version of the Third Concerto. After playing the revised version on tour for a bit, he gave up on that, as well.

Enter his friend Vladimir Horowitz, who asked for and received permission to revise the piece yet again. This Horowitz occasionally played in the 1940s and ’50s, later recording it. What Horowitz did was to reintroduce some elements of the first version into the composer’s 1931 version. But it still doesn’t hold together.

Patched-Together Finale

The main problem is the weak materials of the finale. There’s a lot of sound and keyboard fury, yet the thematic content just isn’t up to that of the first two movements. In an attempt to soften that problem, Glover produced his own version: a part from this, a part from that, a part from the other thing. The essential problem remains, however: No amount of thundering keyboard commotion can really get that finale over the fence.

For all the bravura in the finale’s music, it still sounds like a work-in-progress, one in which anyone can more or less reedit as they please. That said, the lyrical passages of the first movement and all of the slow movement are prime Rachmaninov. Perhaps someday someone will find a solution. That, or simply cut the finale entirely?

Medtner (1880-1951) and Rachmaninov were fellow schoolmates at the Moscow Conservatory, and they remained lifelong friends. Medtner has been called “Rachmaninov Lite.” Still, he has his fans, and indeed there was even a Medtner Society years ago, pushing his music — perhaps it still exists; don’t know. Largely, he wrote almost exclusively for the piano, including three concertos. But to me his work sounds mostly like watered-down Schumann, at best. The lack of striking ideas is remarkable in his unrelenting devotion to blandness.

Then along came the Liszt pieces, all brilliantly inventive and serious in tone. Even the Wagnerian rhapsody sounded reverential to the original. The use of glittering, soft scales and arpeggios that Liszt devised for the bird and water-walking music for his saints set a new pattern of writing that influenced much future piano style — especially French piano music. Debussy’s and Ravel’s piano works are full of such Lisztian devices. Later, they turn up in Bartók and Messiaen, as well. Indeed, the obvious influences on Messiaen’s bird passages and even titles are glaring.

Audiences of the 1850s and ’60s were quite startled by these religious delicacies, especially after getting used to Liszt’s early blasting and bombastic pieces. After all, he had a reputation as something of a rake. Now he was writing profoundly religious music?

New Sound World

Liszt’s poetic whirligigs had created an entirely new sound world for music. With time, the Two Legends were considered important enough to be orchestrated by Liszt himself. That provoked the Franciscan Monastery of Pest to awarded him a St. Francis medal, a thing reserved for major religious contributions. The Legends form a kind of two-movement tone poem, running a bit over 20 minutes.

It has always seemed odd to me that Liszt’s avant-garde innovations are not recognized as being in the same class as those of his friends Berlioz and Wagner. After all, in his later works Liszt was experimenting with bitonality (Nuages gris — Gray clouds), atonality (Bagatelle sans Tonalité), ending without a cadence (the first Valse oubliée, which just stops!). In the opening theme of A Faust Symphony, Liszt created the first 12-tone theme. Far beyond the superficial virtuosity of his reputation, he was relentless in anticipating much of the 20th century.

At Old First Church, Daniel Glover seemed most in his element when playing the Liszt pieces: more relaxed, with more-colorful timbres and better rhythmic control. But beyond that, there was a flawless sense of Lisztian style incorporating its emotional depth. Those virtues were not always true for his Medtner or Rachmaninov selections, all of which sounded a tad impatient. But golly, can he play when faced with worthy compositions! I kept expecting smoke to emerge from the interior of the instrument during the Liszt.

Scriabin’s Prelude for the left hand was elegantly, even lovingly done, brimming with warmth throughout its lush textures. Much of the time it sounded like the pianist was playing with both hands, but then, that’s also true of Ravel’s Concerto for the left hand. It is indeed one of the more impressive of the composer’s early piano works, especially when it is so handsomely played.

Harrell played three Suites each evening: Nos. 1, 3, and 5 on Thursday, and Nos. 2, 4, and 6 the following night. I particularly wanted to hear whether Harrell had found some kind of magic solution to the hideous problems within No. 6 in D major. As it turned out, that piece proved to be the highlight of his Friday program.

Harrell played the wig off the piece, as if it were just another brilliant romp, and the audience in the packed cathedral gave him a rousing, standing ovation. Then, in a charming gesture to the presenters, he played an unaccompanied version of Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood as his encore — and that, too, most stylishly.

We don’t have exact dates for the composition of Bach’s Suites, but it is known that they were written in his early days in Cöthen. The best guestimate is 1720. They were fostered by an amateur cellist, who likely was never able to cope with them, for Bach set out to write a kind of didactic study that progressed from the relatively simple Suite No. 1 in C Major to the white-knuckle demands of No. 5 in C Minor — which calls for false tuning of the instrument (”scordatura”) — and to the even more difficult No. 6. But when a player can deal with all six Suites, he has mastered the art of cello playing.

Each Suite is a bit longer than its predecessor, each gradually becoming more demanding of the fingers and endurance of the performer as it moves along. In the case of the Sixth, the technical demands are compounded by the fact that it was written for a five-string cello: the normal four strings (C, G, D, and A), plus a higher E string. So the cellist today has to make do with four strings while coping with a piece written for five.

Harrell played all of the Suites well, while tending to emphasize the special character of each one. His was not a one-style-fits-all approach, and blessings on him for that.

Rhythmic Freedom

Bach was uncommonly skillful at extracting brilliance from minor keys, especially the usually dour D minor. His Second Cello Suite in D Minor offers both moods: brilliance, along with expressive seriousness. Harrell leaned toward a freedom of rhythm rather than metronomic accuracy. Bach’s Prelude came off like an improvisation: Hell take the bar lines. When Harrell reached the large, slow Sarabande, he played it very slowly indeed, with several Romantic touches in terms of altered dynamics. I was a tad startled at first, but it gradually dawned on me that this made perfect artistic sense.

Then there’s the Fourth Suite in E-flat Major, the jester of the series. Instead of the usual minuet movement, Bach shifted to a mildly rowdy bourrée. Harrell totally changed his approach for this Suite, tending to underline the jokes with heavier accents and even the occasional use of agogic accents (that is, extending the downbeat by a second) during the fast dances.

And indeed, many of the tempos seemed fast, particularly for the Gigue finale, which whipped along as if pursued by a flight of gnats. That’s new to me, but again, it worked to brighten the first part of the recital with a flashy conclusion. Still, that was likely the most controversial performance of the program.

Sheer Artistry

Following the intermission came the whopper, the Sixth Suite in D Major. That Harrell played straight to the page, observing rhythmic values with nary a hint of rhapsody. He accomplished this gripping account with sheer artistry, adding savvy accents and carefully layered dynamic flow.

The fifth Gavotte movement, the most famous section in all the Suites, came off as a thoroughly refreshing experience. For a brief folksy touch, Harrell played a few bars directly on the bridge supporting the strings, which added a little rasp to his tone. I found it somewhat difficult to keep from nodding my head along with the rhythmic pulse — it was that powerful a presentation.

True, the acoustics in Grace Cathedral, with its long echo, are less than ideal for such music. Fast passages tend to fog over, piling up one note on its siblings. On the other hand, the mind began to adjust as the evening progressed. The acoustical lag was ever present, yet less troubling to the ear after the first 15 minutes or so, at least for me.

Visually, she could be mistaken for Audrey Hepburn playing Liza Doolittle entering the ball. Slim, elegant, and perfectly poised, she’s a stunning woman who carries her iridescent indigo gown and sparkling earrings with a grace that would make many an upper-class debutante rend her garments. The looks alone make you want to applaud.

So does the voice. Shimmering and light, with substantial carrying power, her high mezzo is capable of shining freedom on top. About 99 percent of the time, especially when tempered into softly floated phrases, it is drop-dead gorgeous. Heard in the thankfully much improved (but still a ways to go) live acoustic of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Concert Hall, and presented by San Francisco Performances, the voice is ravishing.

Judging from her encores, Leonard seems quite adept in coloratura, and capable of a perfect trill. Her instrument is also clearly secure enough at the high end to enable her to soon assay the soprano solo in Mozart’s C-Minor Mass, which demands a glorious, out-of-the-blue high C that must sound as though beamed down from the heavens above.

Perfect Program

If ever there were a recital program designed to establish a presence, it was Leonard’s. Music in five languages (Spanish, German, French, Russian, and English from our two most recent centuries, plus a Mozart encore that reached back to the 18th) could have served as a model for aspiring vocalists.

Not that many of the Conservatory’s voice students bothered to notice. Although their absence may have been due to the demands of final recitals, it left me wondering what they’re studying. (Susan Graham uttered the same complaint a few years back, after her recital at the University of Indiana at Bloomington drew nary a student to a similarly half-full hall.)

As a song interpreter, Leonard is filled with promise. She is certainly no Cecilia Bartoli, who in her first Cal Performances recital at the age of 23 or 24 left a thrilled audience astounded at her interpretive maturity and shouting for more. Nor is she Kate Royal, whose emotional and vocal depth belies her youth.

Sometimes glorious, sometimes illuminating, and sometimes pedestrian, Leonard instead brought to mind the young Elly Ameling, whose voice was so radiant and appealing at first blush that it took until her 30s for her to move beyond surface glow and become one of the more sensitive and probing recitalists of her era. For now, Leonard impresses as an immensely gifted singer with enormous potential.

Lightness and Suffering

The recital began disappointingly. In the first of three songs by Havana-born Joaquin Nin, Leonard’s beautiful voice failed to differentiate the three verses of A la jota, which crashed from strophic sameness. Perhaps a more assertive and colorful accompanist than Vlad Iftinca could have encouraged Leonard to probe deeper. But in Alma sintamos (Soul, let us suffer!), she displayed a fair share of the heartfelt passion, color, and depth that are central to a recitalist’s mastery.

Leonard’s tears in her voice were equally convincing in Mein Liebster singt am Haus (My dearest’s below singing), the first of six songs from Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. Although the requisite frustration of Schweig’ einmal still (O you beastly ranter) seemed feigned, some phrases were distinguished by lovely shading. Gorgeously floated, teasing highs as well as ideal poise and clarity graced O wär’ dein Haus durschsichtig wie ein Glas (Would that thy house were transparent as glass).

Wir haben beide lange Zeit geschwiegen (Long have we both not spoken) was the high point, poignant, glowing, and gorgeous from first note to last. Were anyone to hear it by itself on CD, they would be tempted to hit the repeat button.

Shadows of Other Voices

When former San Francisco Opera General Director Terence A. McEwen became head of London Records, he invited critics over to share in his passion, his collection of historic vocal recordings. When he asked them if they wanted to hear Claudia Muzio, several replied, “Claudio who?” Which led McEwen to wonder, how can you be a critic when you have no standards?

Some would cry foul to comparing Leonard’s first recital with recordings by the more-seasoned greats. But when those recordings play round and round in a critic’s head as she sings, it would be a disservice to censor what one hears.

Thus, following the Wolf set that was unfailingly lovely (if miles from renditions by Schwarzkopf or Lehmann in both word painting and insight), I could not help but think of Maggie Teyte as Leonard launched into Reynaldo Hahn’s L’Heure exquise (The exquisite hour). Leonard’s floated highs may have been exquisite, but the song’s three verses were dismayingly alike.

Nowhere in evidence was Teyte’s mastery at underscoring emotion by emphasizing words and syllables as though they were being spoken fresh from the heart. The phrasing was also dismayingly modern, lacking elasticity of tempo and specificity of emotion.

Manuel de Falla wrote his Seven Popular Spanish Songs for Maria Barrientos, who recorded them in 1928 with the composer at the piano. (Other benchmark recordings available are by Conchita Supervia and Victoria de los Angeles.) In them, as well as in four songs by Rachmaninov and three cabaret lied by Schoenberg, Leonard displayed gorgeous sounds, but insufficient emotion to convince. “The perfect graduate recital,” muttered my not yet legal husband.

Home Turf Letdown

If any repertoire is telling, it’s songs in one’s own language. In a nonstop medley of Porter, Kern, Gershwin, Berlin, Meredith Wilson, and Rodgers & Hart, Leonard sounded like someone from the burbs slumming in the city. The vibrato seemed an old-fashioned throwback to an earlier generation, the tone and strophic sameness wrong, the dearth of idiomatic phrasing, seduction, and swing dismaying. Till There Was You without sentimentality and I Concentrate on You without smokiness simply will not do.

In encores, the half-Argentinean Leonard failed to grab the Latin guts of De España vengo (I come from Spain). But when she sang Stéphano’s aria from Roméo et Juliette, her glorious vocalism, superb technique, and supremacy on high rightfully brought the house down. “Vedrai carino” from Don Giovanni was almost as good, lacking only the ultimate little-girl charm of a great soubrette. Onstage in Chicago, she may have blown people away.

Technically, aurally, and visually, everything about Isabel Leonard is gorgeous and in place. In another year or two, she may return and leave us floored. Then, there will be no reason to sing, “Till there was you.”

Michelangelo — the Renaissance sculptor, painter, and poet — took center stage in settings by two composers, while the Four Serious Songs of Johannes Brahms completed the program, given under the auspices of San Francisco Performances.

Shostakovich found in the Michelangelo poems, in a free Russian version from a German translation of the original Italian, ideas that accorded with his own life’s battles. Unfortunately, the programs provided the audience with only English translations. Goerne’s achievements are many, but the enunciation of Russian is not among them, and comprehension suffered. Nevertheless, he and Schmalcz brought the manifold emotions contained in this harrowing piece, called Suite on Verses of Michelangelo, blazingly to life.

Songs with names like “Truth,” which reveals the poet’s disdain for an audience who misunderstood his works; “Creativity,” in which sharp, irregular piano chords sound like a crazed hammer and chisel attacking a block of marble; and “Immortality,” the almost humorous final song of the group, in which the poet gently says, “Yet I am not dead: I have changed my dwelling” and the piano trails off into nothingness, abundantly illustrate the mind, heart, and soul of a giant among artists.

Artistic Unity

Two giants, in fact, not to mention their interpreters. The 11 songs are beautifully unified, sometimes by means of similar musical and poetic motives, sometimes because poet and composer seem to speak with one voice.

The emotional power of this little-heard work almost overshadowed the Michelangelo Lieder by Hugo Wolf, even though an intermission separated the two works. Wolf, sensitive as he was to poetry, was deeply moved by the poems given him by a friend, in a German translation. He intended to set a larger group than just three, but the tertiary stage of syphilis robbed him of his mental balance, and the remainder of his life was spent in and out of asylums, ending in a tragically early death.

Goerne showed his formidable powers of control and his refined taste in the very first line of the first song, “Wohl denk’ ich oft an mein vergangnes Leben” (Quite often I think of my past life), spinning out the line in a filament of pure gold. Once again, at the end of the third song, “Fühlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht” (Is my soul feeling the longed-for light) in the phrase “Daran sind, Herrin, deine Augen Schuld” (That, mistress, is the fault of your eyes), Goerne, who at times hunched over the piano like a tortured, demented creature, sang the most beautiful legato imaginable, linking deine and Augen. At such times, the creature had an angelic presence.

The bleakness of the Wolf songs harked back to the starkness of the Shostakovich, and anticipated the next and final set, the Four Serious Songs of Brahms. The first three are to texts from Ecclesiastes, the last from Corinthians. Brahms composed the songs late in his life, when his beloved Clara Schumann had suffered an ultimately fatal stroke.

Not for the first time did I feel an unbridgeable chasm between the almost unbearable pessimism of the first songs and the muscular uplift of the final song, which promises redemption. The set begins with funereal chords, reminiscent of some of the Shostakovich songs: Man is no better than the beast, and they both go to the same place after death. The second song is darker still: Better not to have been born at all than to live to see the evil everywhere in the world.

The third addresses death itself — “O Tod, wie bittre bist du” (O death, how bitter thou art). Bitter, that is, to the rich man whom death wrenches from his precious possessions. To the poor man who has nothing, who is “vexed with all things,” death comes as a welcome release, as a friend.

Goerne and Schmalcz delivered these two songs, the heart of the set, with tenderness and deep empathy, though a dry patch in the baritone’s voice on the exquisitely set “wie” (”O Tod, wie wohl tust du”) made the final passage a little less loving than it should have been.

The final song sounded unavoidably preachy and almost anticlimactic after the unflinching but compassionate probing of the human soul that preceded it. Singer and pianist sounded suitably vaunting at the lines about bestowing all one’s goods on the poor yet not having charity, and an especially lengthy trill on the German word for “I” (Ich) was perfectly executed by Goerne.

There was, blessedly, no encore. It was enough.

Pianists face daunting difficulties when they play Rachmaninov. They have to generate that special, rich, and full-bodied tone associated with the composer. They must spin out long, sinuous, melodic lines, usually more than one (often more than two) at the same time, and then weave these lines through complex textures without losing their view of the entire structure. They have to create immensely expansive, surging waves of intensity, while maintaining springy and, at times, explosive rhythmic vitality. They must possess a tremendous dynamic range, from velvety pianissimo to overwhelmingly booming bell-tones.

Some pianists understand that their performing styles or abilities don’t fit the bill, so they stay away altogether. Alfred Brendel even tried to justify his decision not to play Rachmaninov, by declaring that “Rachmaninov to me seems like a waste of time.”

Mihaela Ursuleasa, a Romanian-born, Vienna-based pianist, who played a concert last Tuesday at Herbst Theatre, presented by San Francisco Performances, was brave enough to dedicate the entire second half of the program to the composer’s Études-Tableaux, Op. 39. Unfortunately, the risk she took did not pay off.

War Pictures

Rachmaninov published two collections of Études-Tableaux, or “picture-studies.” The second of the two sets, Op. 39, is virtuosic in the extreme. Finished in early 1917, a few months before the calamitous Russian Revolution and Rachmaninov’s subsequent departure from his native country, it was conceived as reflections on World War I. All the études save for the last one are in the minor mode, and the whole set has been described as variations on the Dies irae, the ominous medieval chant from the Requiem Mass.

In Ursuleasa’s hands, the Études-Tableaux came out as splashy études rather than heartrending pictorials. The tempos were often rushed at the cost of some missed or replaced notes. A missed note here and there, especially since the Études-Tableaux contain so many to begin with, is an easily forgivable sin. But missed melodic lines in the lower voices are an entirely different matter. Ursuleasa’s rather impressionistic approach to the Études-Tableaux undermined both the vocal nature of Rachmaninov’s linear developments and the darkly hued, nearly apocalyptic imagery.

The sixth étude, according to the composer himself, was inspired by the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Unlike the famed fable, however, Rachmaninov’s version does not arrive at a happy ending. From the first to the last bar, it is a highly disturbing, even devastating piece. Ursuleasa — perhaps unwittingly — presented a much more benign account of the piece, in which the fatigued Wolf eventually gives up his pursuit.

The first half of the program was far more successful. It consisted of Nikolai Medtner’s Sonata Reminiscenza, Op. 38, No.1, and Robert Schumann’s Phantasiestücke, Op. 12. Medtner, a younger contemporary of Rachmaninov’s, was largely overshadowed during his life by his illustrious good friend, and he is still not as widely performed nowadays as Rachmaninov. But his music has its devotees who value Medtner’s remarkable compositional craftsmanship, lyrical appeal, complex polyphonic layering, and rhythmic sophistication.

In both the Medtner and the Schumann, Ursuleasa’s best qualities came to the fore. She is an intelligent pianist who possesses a firm grasp of polyphony and an acute sense of timing. Her playing, under the right circumstances, is marked by rhetorical directness and sincerity that can be deeply moving. She seemingly enjoys the piquant rhythmic interplays that are so vital in both the Sonata Reminiscenza and the Phantasiestücke. The two encores Ursuleasa played after the disappointing Rachmaninov set, Paul Constantinescu’s Toccata and Chopin’s Third Ballade, fortunately restored and reinforced the positive impressions of the first half of the concert.

The celebratory mood carried over into the opening of the program, with Mozart’s early Sonata in D Major, K. 311. The collaboration between the 21-year-old composer and the 22-year-old pianist was imbued with youthful enthusiasm and sparkling wit. Mozart’s incessant, abrupt shifts in dynamics may now seem to be over the top, but we have to keep in mind how fresh the fortepiano was at the time. It was a new and exciting toy, capable of wondrous dynamic changes, and the young Mozart delighted in the newly found special effects.

Regrettably, many pianists today smooth over these sharp contrasts, probably because it is, indeed, difficult to justify most of these effects. To his credit, Blechacz made this tug-of-war between the tender and the rambunctious sound natural and utterly charming.

Another highly successful part of the program was Karol Szymanowski’s Variations in B-flat Minor, Op. 3. Written in 1903, the Variations contain a wide scope of moods and stylistic references. Blechacz was entirely at ease, moving deftly from a somber chorale to an elegant mazurka, from poignant lyricism to powerful climaxes.

Debussy’s Estampes, which preceded the Szymanowski, were not as effective. This group of three pieces, conceived as a set of picturesque prints, requires more tonal opulence than Blechacz was able to extract from the Steinway. The opening number, “Pagodes” (Pagodas), was rendered clearly, but blandly, while in the last number, “Jardins sous la Pluie” (Gardens in the rain), the tone was too substantive, too material. Debussy’s call for “an instrument without hammers” should certainly apply here.

“La Soirée dans Grenade” (An evening in Granada), by contrast, came out irresistibly passionate, even sexy. This mishmash of contrasting fragments is difficult to assemble in a performance, and Debussy never found this piece played as he wanted it. Despite all odds, Blechacz convincingly strung this rhapsodic whimsy together.

A Wild Motley

Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, were featured in the second half of the program. When the preludes appeared in 1839, many of the composer’s contemporaries did not quite know what to make of them. In some respects, Op. 28 still remains an enigma.

It was not the lack of fugues or any other subsequent pieces in Chopin’s set that made a perplexed Schumann call the Preludes “strange pieces,” “sketches,” and “ruins,” “a wild motley” containing “the morbid, the feverish, the repellent.” André Gide’s famous bafflement is a much later development: “I admit that I do not wholly understand the title that Chopin chose to give these short pieces; Preludes. Preludes to what? Each of Bach’s preludes is followed by its fugue; it is an integral part of it.”

In this 20th-century view, Chopin was a trendsetter who dropped the main dish (the fugue) and kept only the appetizer, establishing a precedent for the sets of preludes by Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Shostakovich, and others. Chopin’s contemporaries, however, were not at all bothered by the absence of fugues or any other larger compositions in Op. 28 that would follow every prelude. They knew perfectly well that Chopin’s book of preludes had been preceded by dozens of prelude collections by various composers.

These earlier preludes, however, were not supposed to be performed as independent works. Their function was different. At that time, musicians were expected to improvise before practically every piece they performed in concerts. Not all of them could. In that case, they would just pick a prelude from one of the numerous prelude collections and play it with an improvisational flair, as if made up on the spot.

The cardinal difference between the preludes of Chopin and those of his predecessors was that, as Liszt put it, “Chopin’s Preludes are compositions of an order entirely apart; they are not merely, as the title would indicate, introductions to other morceaux.” Chopin’s preludes turned out to be independent, self-contained pieces rather than introductions to something else. After Chopin the term prelude began to indicate a short character piece.

Knuckle-Busters

The difficulty of playing Chopin’s preludes is not so much technical, even though some of them are real finger-breakers. It is a conceptual complexity that makes the performance of these “strange pieces” so challenging. Blechacz is a brilliant pianist, with a beautiful tone, infectious expressivity, and an innate musical sense. Some preludes (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 23, and 24) were delivered with a fluid rubato, sheer poetry, and, at times, an enthralling, white-hot intensity.

A few others, however, sounded fairly conventional. There are many things that performers can discover in Op. 28. Even such a seemingly minor point as pedaling often plays a significant role. Chopin was extremely meticulous in indicating the pedal, correcting the pedal markings in his manuscripts and published scores again and again. But hardly any pianist, including Blechacz, follows the unusual pedal indications in Preludes 2, 6, 13, and 21. Anyone, however, trying to re-create the original pedaling may be rewarded with remarkable and unexpected artistic results.

The second prelude would have sounded much more bleak and otherworldly without the pedal through most of the piece. And the conclusion of the last prelude would have sounded much more horrifying if Blechacz had heeded Chopin’s wish and held the sustaining pedal down for the last five bars.

The concert ended on a high note. A girl in a gorgeous Polish national dress presented Blechacz with flowers. Then he played two marvelous encores: Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp Minor and Moszkowski’s Étincelles (Sparks).

Beyond its being his debut here, both his compositions and his performing occupied center stage, as Lindberg himself performed on this program of exclusively his own compositions. Since the program featured a few cello pieces, Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen shared the stage, assisting Lindberg on both performing and compositional fronts. Together, they offered a thoughtful array of piano, cello, and duo pieces.

Karttunen collaborated with Lindberg to create two of these duo pieces. One was a transcription of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite, which Lindberg and Karttunen created in 2007. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella is a “neoclassical” work from the early 1920s. In Pulcinella, Stravinsky reworked preexisting music by another composer: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Subsequently, Stravinsky arranged the original work, which was for small orchestra, for violin and piano. He gave the new arrangement the name Suite Italienne, which a cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky, later arranged for cello and piano. While the program notes left the relationship between these previous reworkings and the transcription by Lindberg and Karttunen uncertain, surely their transcription of this piece, which has historically been subjected to many reworkings, sounded quirky and uncanny.

Another duo piece, Dos Coyotes (2008), opened the recital. This composition is also a reworking of preexisting material, that of Lindberg himself. Coyotes began as a composition for children’s choir, which was never much performed because of its difficulty. Eventually, Lindberg adapted material from the choir piece into Coyote Blues, a small-ensemble work whose material Lindberg and Karttunen then adapted for Dos Coyotes.

The cello part of Dos Coyotes is saturated with glissandos, double stops, and other string techniques, making it a challenge to imagine the music in its previous vocal and instrumental ensemble incarnations. Then again, Lindberg did concede to having reworked the material quite freely.

Encore of Possibilities

Concluding the recital was a third and final duo piece, Konzertstück, that Lindberg and Karttunen themselves premiered in 2006. True to its name, this concert piece was the longest and most flashy single piece on the program. By closing with this piece, which includes an impressive solo cello cadenza, the duo virtually guaranteed that the audience would ask for an encore.

The encore that Lindberg and Karttunen performed was an improvisatory piece that required the performers to be attentive about even the most untried possibilities for their instruments. In this sense, the encore was not at all unlike the solo works for piano and cello on the program. These solo works also amounted to sensitive ruminations on the timbral and textural possibilities of each instrument.

The program featured two sets of solo piano pieces: Jubilees, and Études I and II. Lindberg’s program notes claimed that he finds writing for piano difficult, even though — or perhaps precisely because — the instrument is his own. Each of the six movements within Jubilees experiments with a unique pianistic texture. While Études I and II are also textural studies, Lindberg regards Jubilees as a coherent whole, whereas he plans to add more études to his current set of two.

The solo cello Partita parallels Jubilees in that it too has six movements that each explore a unique texture. Lindberg’s Partita sounded nothing like the Baroque dance suites for unaccompanied stringed instruments with the same name. Karttunen performed it well, and the third movement, a lyrical “Aria,” was particularly expressive.

Ultimately, this entire recital expressed a certain candor. Like the no-frills, down-to-earth demeanor of the performers, this program did not aim to dazzle the audience with perfectly wrought, tried-and-true audience pleasers. Rather, Lindberg and Karttunen performed, by and large, quite recent work that reveals the duo at their most experimental and reflective.

These two musicians are serious about making new music together, and Monday night, they shared a refined version of that process with their audience. Thus this concert, by a doubly talented Magnus Lindberg being doubled still again by Anssi Karttunen, was singularly engaging.

Lott’s singing of this repertoire caught the mood of each song beautifully. Her attention to verbal and musical text was exemplary, and articulation and intonation were flawless. She could spin out a long phrase with seemingly endless reserves of breath. Her singing of Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world) was a pleasure to hear, especially in combination with Johnson’s caressing touch at the keyboard and his exquisite shaping of the lines.

In the German songs, Lott’s vocal quality was somewhat lacking in color, generally sounding better on o and u sounds — as in her tender singing of Wolf’s Anakreons Grab (Anakreon’s grave) — and thinner on the e end of the vowel continuum. But her gifts as an actress showed to great advantage in Schumann’s lively Singet nicht in Trauertönen (Sing not in mournful tones), as well as in Wolf’s So lasst mich scheinen (Let me appear), with its lovely pianissimo ending.

The first half ended with Wolf’s setting of Mignon’s song, Kennst du das Land (Do you know the land of lemons and oranges and light breezes?). Wolf’s setting is dramatic, and Lott gave it the full treatment, ably assisted by Johnson, whose mastery of dynamic range showed in blazing fortissimos that quickly subsided into soft passages and never overpowered the voice.

Dressed for the Voyage

Lott was clad in an elegant gray-green gown and jacket for the German songs. She returned after intermission in a stunning red creation closely fitted to her tall, slender form, signaling a marked change of tone. Her voice came to life and the singing actress took the stage: warm, witty, and very French. The only link to the first half of the program was Henri Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage (Invitation to the voyage), which echoed Mignon’s longing for southern climes. In Baudelaire’s words, “there, bathed in warmth and light, all is harmony and beauty, luxury, calm, and pleasure.”

Continuing with other composers’ settings of poems by Baudelaire, Lott gave an exceedingly stylish performance, dripping with a kind of French portamento, of Pierre Capdevielle’s Je n’ai pas oublié (I haven’t forgotten). Equally engaging performances ensued of Le Chat I (First cat) by Henri Sauget, Le Jet d’eau ( Fountain) by Claude Debussy, and another haunting song by Duparc, La Vie antérieure (My former life).

Noel Coward came next: songs from his Conversation Piece, sung in French-accented English along with spoken dialog shared with Johnson. By the end of the recital, Lott was having great fun with French operetta songs to texts by Sacha Guitry, and the enthusiastic audience called her back for two encores, by Noel Coward and Francis Poulenc.

Chloe Pang, a supertalented student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, ended her Saturday recital at the Conservatory with a powerful performance (with faculty Miles Graber on second piano) of the Rachmaninov, whose technical and dramatic challenges can evoke fear and trepidation even in the most seasoned of pianists.

Chloe Pang

Pang seemed to take on the challenges fearlessly, like a young colt eager to trot off on a new, exciting adventure. The piece started with the beautiful, nostalgic theme that is so unmistakably Russian, and then rose in a flurry of marvelously light, virtuosic embellishments that Pang played at scintillating, lightning speed.

When the music became romantically heartfelt, though, as in the lush second theme, she played tenderly, with a bit of restraint. The second movement, rich and deep in color, begins with another typically Russian theme, both tender and melancholic.

In the finale, Pang suddenly unleashed her inner demon, which allowed the performance to grow in dramatic intensity toward the climactic coda, where every last resource of the pianist is called upon to bring this piece to a triumphant conclusion. The audience responded with a howling ovation.

Captivating Promise

The first half of the program showed elements of Pang’s mature artistry, and also of her youthful inexperience. She began the recital with an engaging account of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 10, No. 3. Especially noteworthy were the outer two movements, where she displayed perfect technical and rhythmic control of the composer’s wide-ranging octave passages, sharp accentuation, sudden fermatas, and compact thematic material.

The second movement, marked “Largo e mesto” (slow and mournful), is a slow movement like none written before Beethoven. It is the center of gravity of the entire sonata. The grief-laden theme constantly returns, progressing to anguished cries at the top of the instrument’s range. I think a pianist has imagine being an actor in a Greek tragedy in order to express this music more effectively.

The rest of the program consisted of Barber’s Excursions; Scriabin’s Etude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 2, No. 1; and Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso. All three performances showed off Pang’s admirable technical precision and nice sense of style. Yet to elevate her playing to a higher level of eloquence would require a deeper emotional connection with the music, so that her own involvement would truly move the listener. Perhaps listening to great, soulful singers like Maria Callas or Ella Fitzgerald would be a catalyst for this young artist.