Rosamond Drooker

Rosamond Drooker is one of those rare pianists who can completely immerse herself in everything she plays. Her music affects the listener so directly that technique and interpretation are all but forgotten. To refine these out of existence is the essence of real musicianship, and Miss Drooker demonstrated Wednesday night that she is a real musician.

The Radcliffe senior began with Bach's French Suite No. 3. She played the seven sections as they deserve to be played--not as finger exercises but as lively, subtle dances. In fact, each piece on the program seemed to receive exactly the performance it was created for. Miss Drooker played Scriabin's quietly expressive Nocturne for Left Hand (op. 9, no. 2) without falling into the usual traps of excessively free rhythm and over-pedaling. Her graceful, well-paced renditions of Debussy's Passepied, from the Suite Bergamasque, and Minstrels showed how effective these can be when they are played "straight."

Schuman's G-Minor Sonata gave her the opportunity to display her considerable technical powers. Despite the composer's maddening instructions ("As fast as possible," he demands at one point in the Rondo, and, a few measures afterwards, "still faster"), the sudden fortissimo outbursts, fast octave scales, and other bravura passages rattled along without mishap. And while Beethoven's Twelve Variations on a Russian Dance Tune may lack profundity and grandeur, they are good, clean fun and Miss Drooker made the most of them. Her elastic, but consistent phrasing gave logic to the variations, without binding them in a formalistic straightjacket.