Amazin' Awadagin Hits Boston

"Let no one say we chose a middle-of-the-road player." So said one of the judges of the 1992 Naumburg International Piano Competition, which Awadagin Pratt won with a flourish. At Jordan Hall on Sunday, Pratt was weaving between lanes and hogging both shoulders.

His program was comprised of only three works: the Bach Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, the Brahms Handel Variations and Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition."

A word about the pianist. He's big. Buff. With dreads. He sits lower at the piano than Glenn Gould did. It's often hard to count the "f"s in his fortes. That's Awadagin. In other words, after Maurizio Pollini's recital last month, it was "time for something completely different."

Though "Bach-Pratt" may never achieve the hyphenated ubiquity of "Bach-Busoni," the pianist's realization of the organ music was good, particularly in the translation of pedal points and high-register fireworks. In the Passacaglia, his loud, turbo righthand octaves were sensational, though there seemed to be some rhythmic slipping and sliding. The first fugal episode was marvelous, and it was interesting to consider just how well the Hall worked as church space. Sometimes the texture of the fugue became too dense or blurred for comprehension, but the forceful, toccata-style ending was astonishingly clear.

It says a lot about the scope and ambition of Pratt's concert program that a piece as great as the Bach acted as prelude. It also says a lot about Brahms' Op. 24 variations that the set succeeded as successor.

This miracle of invention, inspired by a vanilla aria on which Handel himself wrote five unassuming variations, drew praise even from Brahms' antipode, Wagner. Like their worthy companions, the Bach Goldberg and the Beethoven Diabelli, these pieces explore the melodic and harmonic potential of their progenitor exhaustively, and function collectively as a treatise on the composer's sense of keyboard style. But more than the Goldberg and the Diabelli, the Handel variations are witty and hip.

Under Pratt's fingers, the individual variations that were good became great. Even in some of the fastest moving ones Pratt brought out long singing lines. And when he chose to pay attention to the bass--that is, when the left hand took over--the music reinvented itself. But sometimes, sadly, the left hand all but disappeared. The tempi, too, were occasionally irregular.

However, there were plenty of empyrean moments. At first the great Magyar thirteenth variation seemed in danger of being too subdued, but then a gust of forceful, mordent arpeggios stirred one back to sense. Pratt's deliberation over the chromaticism of variation 20 was delicious, and his energized attacca of the fugue was stupendous. This is not your grandfather's Brahms--Wilhelm Backhaus was. Wilhelm Backhaus did not have dread-locks.

Before the second half of the program began, an honest audience member's appraisal might have run something like this: "Awadagin is musically intense, but not note-perfect." This held true for the Mussorgsky too, but the music making took place on a much higher plane.

The performances of the individual "pictures" were so engaging that whenever the waddling Promenade theme urged us on to the next exhibit, it was like a pushy security guard at closing time. Pratt's technique was dazzling in the "Gnome," sustaining a fine sense of balance in a texture (and a context) like that of Ravel's "Scarbo."

Mussorgsky's response to Hartmann's "The Old Castle, "Il vecchio castello," was revelatory under Pratt's clarity of musical thought: the piece presented itself as motivically similar to much of Chopin's third Ballade, and later seemed like the genesis for the inverted figures of "Bydlo." These discoveries would never have emerged from one of the many orchestrated versions of "Pictures."

The "Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells" was so coy that many people in the audience laughed aloud. "Cum mortuis in lingua mortua," ("Among the dead in a dead language") became eerily reminiscent of the eighth Brahms Paganini variation in book one.

Pratt's confidence in "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" was beyond belief. It sounded as if he had been playing this piece for twice his age. But what made the entire performance of "Pictures" truly great, as good as the golden Benno Moiseiwitsch recording, was his huge sound at "The Great Gate of Kiev." The audience was completely under his spell. And his choice of encore, the Schumann-Liszt "Widmung," sent everyone home smiling.

Pratt, who debuted at Carnegie Hall a couple of weeks ago and got three standing ovations, enjoys an already fruitful performing career and an even brighter future.

Next up in the Richmond recital series: Dubravka Tomsic on Feb. 8

The "Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells" was so coy that many people in the audience laughed aloud. "Cum mortuis in lingua mortua," ("Among the dead in a dead language") became eerily reminiscent of the eighth Brahms Paganini variation in book one.

Pratt's confidence in "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" was beyond belief. It sounded as if he had been playing this piece for twice his age. But what made the entire performance of "Pictures" truly great, as good as the golden Benno Moiseiwitsch recording, was his huge sound at "The Great Gate of Kiev." The audience was completely under his spell. And his choice of encore, the Schumann-Liszt "Widmung," sent everyone home smiling.

Pratt, who debuted at Carnegie Hall a couple of weeks ago and got three standing ovations, enjoys an already fruitful performing career and an even brighter future.

Next up in the Richmond recital series: Dubravka Tomsic on Feb. 8