Louis Pelosi presents Chang, Borowiak, Pelosi: Old and New Works for Piano in Review
Sharon Chang and Mateusz Borowiak, pianists
Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center, New York, NY
April 23, 2023
A fascinating concert took place this Sunday at Merkin Hall, featuring music by composer (and presenter here) Louis Pelosi, whose 76th birthday it was on this occasion. I had a few years ago heard some of Mr. Pelosi’s piano music championed persuasively by the pianist Donald Isler, a thoughtful musician who also writes for New York Concert Review, and it had been an intriguing introduction to an equally thoughtful composer, inviting further study. Mr. Isler’s label, KASP Records, also released several CDs of Mr. Pelosi’s music, including one 2012 disc by pianist Mateusz Borowiak who performed half of Sunday’s program. The other half of the program was performed by pianist Sharon Chang.
Born on April 23, 1947, Mr. Pelosi has taken an unconventional career route for a composer, his biography stating that he “declined to work in academia or the commercial music world” and so has earned his livelihood as a self-employed piano technician. He received several degrees (BA from the University of Notre Dame, English, BM in Composition from Hartt College with Arnold Franchetti, and MM in Composition from the Manhattan School of Music under Charles Wuorinen), but it was clear from everything about this Sunday concert’s that he prospers by carving out his own unconventional path, composing with his own tonal language, often within structures such as fugues and inventions which one might call Bachian (to allude to another composer who followed his own heart, far from more fashionable musical pursuits). Mr. Pelosi has nonetheless amassed an impressive array of performances and recordings to his credit.
One big plus of Sunday’s concert was the format, with works of two other composers included, Bach (via Busoni) and Beethoven. It was refreshing to hear world premieres alongside familiar masterpieces rather than relegating new music (as often happens) to “quarantined” status, but beyond that, each piece illuminated the next. Another big plus was the presentation of two excellent young artists to perform all of it, both of whom impressed as worth hearing in any repertoire.
Mateusz Borowiak, a powerhouse pianist with substantial credentials (including being laureate in several important competitions such as the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium), opened the first half with a World Premiere of Mr. Pelosi’s Piano Sonata No. 7 in D (2016-17). Consisting of several mostly attacca movements of contrasting tempi and moods, connected by six transitional sections entitled Scorrevole (translated roughly as “gliding”), it was bursting with ideas and sometimes with chromatic lines intertwining quite closely, requiring extremely keen listening from the performer and audience alike in addition to some pianistic wizardry. Mr. Borowiak was more than up to its thorny challenges.
One wondered at times, with such a flood of ideas, whether Mr. Pelosi might have overestimated the average listener’s ears in this work. He states his credo on his website as, “What the sensitive ear can follow, so can the mind accept and the soul be moved and enlarged” – a refreshing expression of regard for one’s audience. Somehow though, despite Mr. Borowiak’s skill at sorting out and projecting the many rapidly entwined chromatic lines, this listener (with a half-century of ear-training experience of all kinds) was still at sea, wondering which of so many ideas to focus on, or – if the answer is “all of them,” wondering just where they were headed and what I was missing. Perhaps program notes would have helped. Thankfully, this was a concern that did not persist past this piece.
Mr. Borowiak followed with Bach’s “St. Anne” Prelude and Fugue in E-Flat major BWV 552, played absolutely brilliantly in Busoni’s virtuoso transcription. Mr. Borowiak navigated the whole gamut of fierce pianistic demands, drawing attention not to himself but to the grandeur of the music, interpreted with mastery. He is an artist one looks forward to following.
Returning to the music of Mr. Pelosi, his Sonata No. 8 (2019-2020) closed the first half with fewer of the issues that this reviewer had felt in Sonata No. 7. Perhaps the intervening Bach had helped a bit to sharpen up this listener’s contrapuntal acuity, but the Sonata No. 8 seemed also much simpler and more accessible in rhythm and affect. It seemed to stay with ideas a bit longer, introducing more discernibly repeating patterns and dancelike elements and giving the listener time to absorb them. One could hear a fine mind behind it but also enjoy it. (We mortals enjoy the reassurance of a bit of repetition or continuity now and then). Also, there was more of a sense of tonal grounding. Mr. Pelosi’s penchant is for creating a pull towards a key (in this case E-flat) without seeming quite IN a key. His endings – as here – are as far as I’ve seen on the key a piece is listed to be in, but even with his endings there is some ambiguity as to mode. (On the topic of keys incidentally, the composer’s shunning of key signatures can make his scores appear as a daunting barrage of accidentals, so one admired still more the perseverance of tonight’s pianists.)
The evening’s second pianist, Sharon Chang, proved to be outstanding as well. She brought her keen listening, coloristic skill, and superb control to Louis Pelosi’s Twelve Fugal Metamorphoses (2020) and Twelve Inventions (2018 – dedicated to Donald Isler), which bookended Beethoven’s great Sonata in A major, Op. 101.
The Twelve Fugal Metamorphoses, like the Sonata No. 7, overflowed with ideas, but each one here felt (perhaps from being compartmentalized as individual pieces) highly assimilable. I enjoyed the set thoroughly. My favorites were the dreamlike No. 5 in E-flat, the nicely arched No. 6 in G, the lovely No. 7 in A-flat, the short, agitated No. 8 in C, the No. 9 in E with its pervasive fifths and octaves giving it an open quality, and the fascinating four-part No. 10 in F. Suffice it to say that the whole set, which had loomed formidably on the program, simply flew by. Certainly, this was in no small part thanks to Ms. Chang’s abilities, but one also felt that Mr. Pelosi has a particularly special gift for these forms. Perhaps another set of fugues or inventions is in order – it would be a commissioning project well worth considering for some fine pianist.
Beethoven’s Op. 101 came next, and with all its fugal writing it fit right in. To start, Ms. Chang established a serene measured tempo for its introspective opening. It is never easy to carry the second half of a program (irrespective of whether the first half’s soloist is celebrating or atoning backstage), but here we had the added stress of two world premieres with the composer present. In following the Fugal Metamorphoses with late Beethoven, a large work now played from memory, there was much switching of gears required (as with Mr. Borowiak’s Bach-Busoni). Ms. Chang gave herself time to breathe in Op. 101’s opening and was rewarded for it. The alla marcia moved to a decisive, bracing spirit, and the subsequent melting into its pedaled D-flat section was perfect. There were some glitches here and there, but overall it was an admirable performance. Her marked skill in delineating voices boded well for the Inventions to come.
Once again, the placement between new works of a classic with fugal writing served everyone well. A listener grew increasingly sensitized from one piece to the next. (In this case, even the octaves in Mr. Pelosi’s Invention No. 2, descending by emphatic thirds, had one jump at the near déjà vu from Op. 101). Ms. Chang chose to order the Inventions as follows: C, F, Bb, Eb, E, A, D, G, Gb, B, Ab, and Db (four sequences of descending fifths, in one case enharmonic). Highlights included No. 1 in C, vaguely reminiscent of Shostakovich (who in his own way also followed Bach’s example), and No. 4 in F with its gentle streaming sixteenths. Some, like No. 11 in E, felt more rigorously imitative, while others, like No. 6 in E-flat, with its prevalence of open-sounding fourths and sevenths, swept up the listener in the wash of resulting harmonies and colors. This reviewer’s very favorite, chosen by Ms. Chang to be the final one, was No. 10 in D-flat, bringing to mind (in key and in its rocking bass) Chopin’s Berceuse. The absence of what one expected as a full “resolution” of preceding chords made the final single D-flat all the more poignant, and Ms. Chang concluded the concert beautifully with it.
One reads that Mr. Pelosi married artist Rosemarie Koczÿ in 1980, and after her untimely death in 2007 has created numerous works in her honor and memory. That labor of love aspect is very much in evidence in much of the music we heard. One wishes Mr. Pelosi not only a very happy birthday week but many more years of continued fruitfulness.
