MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1990
A-7
Pianist Jonathan Bass
opens recital series
of Beethoven Fellows
By JAY HARVEY
STAR STAFF WRITER
Starting a season that will
climax in the selection of three
new Beethoven Fellows next
March, one of the "class of '89"
opened the American Pianists
Association's PianoTest series
Sunday afternoon at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Jonathan Bass entered the
cozy stage of the DeBoest Lecture Hall to find a full house
awaiting his performance, a sure
sign of the loyalty the Beethoven
Fellows series has accumulated
over several years here.
He overcame the rather lifeless acoustics of the room and a
Bosendorfer piano that may need
a little work. At any rate, it
doesn't seem logical to ascribe
the instrument's glassy treble
and tubby bass to inadequacies
in the hall or the performer.
That being said, it was a little
hard to fathom Bass's interpretation of Schumann's Kreisler-
iana. This suite of short pieces
inspired by a character of the
romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann's surely has a freer range
of expression and quasi-dramatic energy than Bass gave it.
In some places, he seemed to
have a heavy foot on the pedal,
perhaps to maximize the music's
resonance. The movement
marked Sehr aufegregt had very
little of the excitement suggested
by that heading, and one had to
wait until the fifth piece {Sehr
lebhaft) to note the presence of
Schumann's livelier side.
Not all the notes "spoke" in
the final piece, despite the overall unanimity of technique and
feeling in Bass's performance.
Coupled with some peculiar, momentary lapses in Mozart's Rondo in A minor, K. 511, this
raised the question of whether
MUSIC REVIEW
Performer — Jonathan Bass, piano
Where — Indianapolis Museum of Art
the piano's action was too stiff to
suit the pianist.
In both the Mozart and the
Schumann works, which made
up the recital's first half, Bass's
affinity for subdued, introspective music riveted the attention
and kept his artistry from seeming slightly ineffectual.
That question didn't come up
at all for this listener in the
second half, which began with
Chopin's Four Mazurkas, Opus
33, and went on to the same
composer's Impromptu in F-
sharp. Opus 36, and Waltz in A-
flat. Opus 42, before ending with
Alexander Scriabin's pulsating,
sporadically obscure Sonata No.
5, Opus 53.
Although Bass dallied a while
before establishing the right
pulse for the first mazurka (Lento), he soon took command of
these short pieces, based on a
Polish dance form that no one
turned better to artistic purposes
than Chopin. Particularly
matched to Bass's temperament
was the gentle dolor of the final
piece in this set. marked Mesto.
The Scriabin sonata enabled
Bass to display the florid side of
his technique while continuing
to look within. It's a peculiarity
of this Russian composer to
seem contemplative even when
excited to fever pitch. That trick
seemed to capture Bass's imagination, and his performance was
quite satisfying.
Bass will present a briefer
program, with music by Ravel,
Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Copland/Bernstein at noon Thursday in the Green Room of the
Circle Theatre.
American Pianists Association
