Timo Andres @ Cliburn Concerts

Photo courtesy of Cliburn Foundation

—Wayne Lee Gay

Counter-intuitive? Maybe.

Thought-provoking? Definitely—as well as unfailingly engaging and intriguing.

Pianist and composer Timo Andres presented a beautifully conceived and performed montage on Thursday night, alternating Scott Joplin rags and Chopin mazurkas for a Cliburn at the Modern concert in Fort Worth.

Though few music lovers would immediately associate a) the central figure of nineteenth-century romantic pianism, with b) the leading purveyor of catchy syncopated tunes in early 20th-century America, the pairing makes sense. Andres alternated five of Chopin's sixty-plus mazurkas with five of Joplin's fifty-plus piano rags, producing a conversation of geniuses. Indeed, the juxtaposition enhanced rather than diminished the power of both to captivate the ear of the listener.

Inspired by central European folk dance, Chopin's mazurkas—as Andres pointed out in post-concert comments—constantly pull the listener in surprising directions harmonically. Although largely neglected on the concert stage in comparison to Chopin's other works, the mazurkas are in many ways the most innovative and forward-looking of his output. For his part, Andres constantly explored the possibilities of articulation and dynamics: sometimes grandly assertive, as in the Mazurka in B-flat major, Opus 17, No, 1, or searching, almost spooky at times in the Marzurka in B-flat minor, Opus 24, No. 4, closing with a deliberately blurred pedal.

And Andres was, if anything, even more adventurous in the Joplin rags. Deliberately by-passing the well-known standard "Maple Leaf" and "Easy Winners" rags, he reveled not only in the obvious dance-like energy of the chosen works, but in the delicate (and oft overlooked) counterpoint of the "Gladiolus Rag," the bounding leaps of "Euphonic Sounds," and the lean elegance of "Paragon Rag."

The ten works in the montage were further justified via a well-plotted—and again, somewhat counter-intuitive—harmonic progression within the cycle.

As a Prelude to the Joplin-Chopin montage, Andres performed label-defying composer Robin Holcomb's Wherein Lies the Good, an episodic, thirteen-minute ramble that—at the risk of oversimplifying—sounds like Stephen Foster meets Phil Glass meets Aaron Copland. Following the montage, Andres closed with his own "Wise Words," a smooth three-minute rumination over a tremolo bass (inspired by a torturous technical challenge in Beethoven's Sonata No. 27), and his eight-minute, sonorous, and frankly minimalist "Honest Labor." The classical piano tradition has long been a key element in the cultural life of Fort Worth; Andres' recital brought a welcome broadening of the possibilities of that tradition.

WHEN: Concert performed on February 24, 2023

WHERE: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

WEB: cliburn.org/concerts