Michael Mizrahi, pianist recital

The pianist Michael Mizrahi performed a recital of Beethoven and 21st-Century composers at the Sears Recital Hall on the University of Dayton campus today. The program included five composers who are new to me, and their works were all written between 2005 and 2011.

The Beethoven pieces included the Rondo Op. 51 No. 1, composed 1796-97 at age 27, and his Eleven Bagatelles Op. 119, composed 1820-1822 perhaps as sources of spare income while he was working on the Missa Solemnis. The Rondo clearly shows the influence of the late classical masters, and its formal organization is straightforward with clear melodies and well-crafted contrasts. The bagatelles are a type unto themselves. Most are miniatures in a strong A-B-A structure, each lasting from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. (Score is available at the International Music Score Library Project.) Though they are small, they belie the meaning of bagatelle (a thing of little importance). The first introduces a nice cross-relation within its first four measures, and this sets up a relative freedom with tonal centers that makes a momentary jolt in almost every piece. —Mind you, this Beethoven guy still works well with a strong sense of cadence and fluid key changes.

Of a pleasant contrast was the selection of new works for piano. The Beethoven Rondo was contrasted by three works by Patrick Burke (b. 1974), John Mayrose (b. 1976), and Mark Dancigers (b. 1981). The Beethoven Bagatelles were contrasted by a set of four short pieces by Ryan Brown (b. 1979). To close the recital with yet another contrast, Mizrahi played a new reconstruction of Chopin's Mazurka in F minor (Op. 68 No. 4) and followed that with a Ballade by Judd Greenstein (b. 1979). The new works are available all together on Mr. Mizrahi's recent CD, The Bright Motion. The constrasts and comparisons to Beethoven and Chopin are generously explored, and none of the new works stray too far afield from a central tonal area. —Mind you, the works lack traditional cadence though the motivic structure keeps one well grounded.

Burke's Unravel (2011) presents a short motif that repeats quite a few times with interspersed echoes before breaking away from the original 3-note germ. Its texture and structure reminds one of Copland's orchestral works once he settled into the most listenable American composer of the mid-Twentieth Century.

Mayrose's Faux Patterns (2009) ruminates on a two-note motif of G-flat and F. The texture gradually, carefully expands and creates its own joy in cross-relations, and then, almost as voices from other worlds, points of tone at the upper and lower reaches of the keyboard add their comment on the half-tone motif.

Dancigers' The Bright Motion first movement (2011) marries Claude Debussy to late Philip Glass in a convincing home scene, including a clear reference to La Cathédrale engloutie and an oblique to other works from the Préludes.

Brown's Four Pieces for Solo Piano (2010) become almost a hearing test for my sixth-decade ears, in which few tones below middle C are struck. His work is much more rhythm-centered, and it merges repetitions that Meredith Monk would be happy to obsess on with clusters and chords that Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans could be glad to expand on.

Greenstein's First Ballade (2008) also explores the highest registers, though the motivic structure drops often into the lower tones as a contrast to what becomes a filigree of way-above-staff figures. Overall, I felt the Ballade to be the most expansive of the pieces from these new composers. —That is not to say longwinded, as this piece seems a bit too short at 8 minutes.