A Home-Grown Program

DAVID Feurzeig '87 ushered in an auspicious new season of Dunster House chamber concerts last Sunday afternoon with a recital of 20th-century American piano music. Perhaps the most impressive feature of this concert was its program, which consisted almost entirely of works composed by Dunster residents.

David Feurzeig, pianist

Dunster House Library

September 27

The first Dunster-penned work was a short piece titled "A Few Minutes to A," by a recent graduate of the house, Justin Davidson, who also happens to have been Feurzieg's roommate last year. Davidson's writing is marked by a great sense of control and an ability to express keen changes of mood without wasting a note.

The four movements--marked 'romantic', 'energetic', 'mysterious', and 'stormy'--exemplified the best characteristics of short piano repertoire, full of inspiration, yet never stifled by the brevity of the form. Within each short movement, the composer achieved a broad range of expression. His 'romantic' was romantic--resplendent in rolling arpeggios and octave runs. His 'energetic' evoked a clockwork sort of busy-ness with fast chromatic fingerwork; and his 'mysterious' combined bright interjections from the right hand over dense tone clusters and sombre, meandering notes in the bass to set a mood of eerie expectancy.

Part of the reason this piece sounded so good on Sunday might be that Fuerzeig consulted with his old roommate, the composer, before the performance.

THE SECOND in-house selection was by Dunster's own composer-in-residence, Charles Kletzsch, whose enthusiasm and talent have long fired the house music program. It was titled 'Sonata for Piano No. 3, in F# Major', and was actually penned nearly 25 years ago.

Where Davidson's talent lies in the succinctly evocative, Kletzsch grants himself a freer hand over his composition, allowing the generous repetition of themes to broaden his canvas. Sometimes, as in moments during the first movement, 'moderato cantabile', the repetition tends to long-windedness; a series of triplet structures, for example, seem a bit too obvious in their last few recapitulations (especially after the piece's lovely opening, reminiscent of a Bach sarabande).

At other moments, such as in the exquisitely mysterious second movement, the effect is more lulling, and meditative. The last movement opens with a fanfare of rolling major arpeggios, and seems best of all suited to the composer's bold themes and unabashed fondness for virtuoso showmanship.

The recital's final in-house work was 'Six Preludes', by James Romeo, Dunster's house music tutor. Romeo wrote these preludes as simpler pieces for his piano students at Harvard, but in their simplicity they display the composer's talent for the pleasingly lyrical. The first of the preludes uses the sustain pedal to allow harp-like tones to reverberate within the piano, creating a sort of water-color of sound reminiscent of Debussy.

Fuerzeig ended the program with a very jazzy taste of Gershwin, in honor of what would have been the composer's 89th birthday this week. These short selections, the 'Preludes for Piano' and 'I Got Rhythm', were played with the same technical confidence and attention to detail which marked the entire program.

The Dunster House Chamber Music Society has gotten off to an excellent start for its season.