MUSIC REVIEW : Bookstein Balances Old With the New

At Thursday evening’s premiere performance of Ronn Yedidia’s Concerto for Piano and Electronic Instruments, pianist Kenneth Bookstein shook the Sherwood Auditorium rafters, sending a few patrons scurrying for the exits. In this context, where experiment is all too rare, it was a welcome sight.

Monday’s concert inaugurated the Athenaeum’s weeklong series of arts events, celebrating the move into newly renovated quarters for La Jolla’s unique music and fine arts library.

Bookstein, a former La Jollan who now lives in New York, chose a program that balanced the hallowed keyboard repertory of Bach, Schumann and Chopin with Yedidia’s newly completed opus, a signal that the Athenaeum is striving to be more than just a museum preoccupied with past achievement.

Yedidia’s expansive, single movement concerto recast the Lisztian, virtuoso piano concerto in the contemporary medium of piano and computer-controlled electronic instruments. From the standpoint of structure, the young Israeli composer broke no new ground; he relied on the skillful alternation and juxtaposition of his two instruments.

The Concerto lasted just under 30 minutes, but Yedidia’s wealth of invention and compact construction justified the duration. Although he favored dense, complex textures, he did not eschew thematic development.

Bookstein confidently projected the work’s bold piano part. Although it is tempting to compare Yedidia’s keyboard idiom with the restless Expressionism of early Schoenberg or late Scriabin, the composer has his own voice. His writing for the electronic component was less convincing, however. Naive, synthetic, the sounds too frequently brought to mind the onerous moan of an electronic organ.

Chopin’s B Minor Sonata proved an apt showcase for Bookstein’s solid technique, although the treacherous descending flourishes in the blazing finale exceeded his otherwise unfailing grasp. Bookstein brought ample brilliance and agility to the familiar work, which he shaped with a perceptive, analytical eye and ear. No sentiment clouded his Apollonian vision of the Sonata.

Bookstein is a fluent, serious performer, although he makes his case with relentless ardor. He appears to need some reassurance that he will not lose his audience if he lingers over a phrase or indulges in an occasional rubato.

It was difficult to warm to Bookstein’s pair of Robert Schumann selections from “Phantasie-stucke,” Op. 12, although they were performed with frenetic dispatch. His Schumann was all inflamed passion, but without the mystery and intimacy, that “Des Abends” requires.

Bookstein opened his program with an intense and slightly larger than life Prelude and Fugue in D Minor from the second volume of J. S. Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.”