Music Reviews : Dutkiewicz Plays Contemporary Works

Both a skilled composer and a dynamic pianist, Andrzej Dutkiewicz is a capable and tireless advocate for contemporary Polish music, as he demonstrated Saturday evening at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute.

Three of his own compositions exhibited logical organization, unity and conciseness. His music displays an obvious debt to composers before him, but still makes a strong and personal statement. His Stravinskian Suite for Piano (1970) places charged rhythmic patterns and folk-like melodic figures over a strongly tonal foundation. In “Three Sketches in Retrospect” (1985), a triadic, meditative “Hymnus” is followed by a very lyrical, Chopin-esque Mazurka and a sappy Pastorale.

Prerecorded sounds dominate in his “Six Meditations” for piano and tape, while the pianist plays slowly repeated notes, some dampened, some plucked, some struck with mallets. Though old-fashioned by electronic-music standards, the 1979 work effectively integrates its parts, and the composer’s ideas unfold cogently.

No other work on the program measured up to Dutkiewicz’s compositions. Most effective was Zbigniew Baginski’s “Miscellanea,” in which a string of melodic-rhythmic figures are organized into a succinct statement. Tomasz Sikorski’s “Zerstreutes Hinausschauen,” though lacking in depth, proved rhythmically vital and clear in form.

Marian Borkowski’s “Fragmenti” is well named, for its disparate elements never continue for long. Also written in stop-and-go style are Renata Kunkel’s “Phrases” and Boguslaw Schaeffer’s “Model VII.”

To each work Dutkiewicz brought assurance and conviction, though at times too much force. The 45-year-old pianist opened his recital with a sensitive account of five etudes from Szymanowski’s Opus 33.