The works comprising this recital are (with two brash exceptions) rather intimate and inward-looking. Some are unfamiliar as well, being outside of the repertorial mainstream. For me all these pieces tend to bear out Frances Bacon's dictum: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." This applies, I feel, even to the better known works, but is perhaps heightened in one's experience of the newly encountered: Tisdall, Wolpe, Bach(!), Beethoven (!), Brahms transcriptions, and even Mozart's peculiar and powerful Fantasy and Fugue. A few facts and observations follow. Almost nothing is known about William Tisdall ( b.1570?), unlike his celebrated contemporaries Byrd, Gibbons, Bull, and others of the English Virginalist School. Chromatic clashes saturate this poignant, almost dream-like pavane. Bach published four "Duets" in volume three (1735) of his four volume "Keyboard Practice" (a compendium which includes the Partitas, Goldberg Variations, and other works). They are extended, playfully erudite, two-part inventions. The E minor is a heady blend of chromaticism, off-beat rhythms, and scalar patterns in strict canon. Stefan Wolpe's 1941 Pastorale was dedicated to the pianist Jack Maxin (a youngster of twelve at the time) who later taught at the New England Conservatory for many years. This concentrated gem begins as a two-part invention, yet blossoms unexpectedly into full throated song... The present arrangement of the plaintive, gently agitated "poco allegretto" movement from Brahms' G major viola quintet rests on a contemporaneous arrangement by Grützmacher. For me it is a special joy to render this heartfelt piece on piano. In 1896 Brahms composed his final work, Eleven Chorale-preludes, Op. 122. Number eight, "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen“ (A Rose Breaks into Bloom) was transcribed, along with several others, for piano by Busoni. (It's opening notes instantly call to mind Nat Cole's hit tune "Mona Lisa"....!) Opp. 76 No. 4, 117 No. 2, and 116 No. 5 are among Brahms' more introspective intermezzi, the latter being certainly the composer's most enigmatic. Beethoven's F minor prelude, practically unknown, while certainly in print, creates an improvisation in Bachian texture, modest but possessing its own aura and sense of purpose. A bagatelle like no other. Also seeming to stand apart is Mozart's C major Fantasy and Fugue, an intense and highly uncharacteristic creation of its maker. The fantasy's restless insistence is "Baroque" yet stylistically difficult to pinpoint. Brusque and compact, the fugue is bouncily Handellian, while peppered with dissonance. And it pulls out all the contrapuntal stops. In toto, this is a singular production! No one but Chopin (only twenty-one when his early B major nocturne was written) could have conjured the particular lilting chromatic melancholy of the opening music, which enfolds a darkly turbulent contrasting section in B minor. A dreamily delicate coda concludes this perfect piece. Ravel was, to a degree, Chopin's 20th century counterpart, at least where the piano is concerned. His Pavane for a Dead Princess (perhaps even better known in its orchestral version) and Jeux d'eau, both early works, exhibit qualities of fastidious craft, balance, and striking originality. The Pavane is a magical fusion of the formal and the intimate, an intersection which suited Ravel's imagination wonderfully. An inward dimension, sometimes overlooked, seems to me always present in the imaginative virtuosity of Jeux d'eau (as in his later Ondine). Again, a double-edged achievement. It is reported that Stravinsky's Piano-Rag Music was the composer's response to being shown (by Ansermet, in Switzerland, 1919) sheet music of American ragtime. A brilliant, wicked and highly un-American response, to be sure! What goes around comes around, they say, and David Feurzeig's riposte to Stravinsky, "Stride-Rite", takes snippets from "The Rite..." insistently and hilariously Americanizing them. TOUCHÉ! – Andrew Rangell