MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Jensen at Seal Beach Fest

After 17 years, the Seal Beach Chamber Music Festival remains a modest affair, a series of six free concerts held in the McGaugh School Auditorium. It might be stretching the point to call it a chamber-music festival, however, as at least half of the programs this summer are piano recitals. Quaintly, and perhaps ominously, the house finds it necessary to include the following instruction on the printed program, “Please, No Talking During the Music.”

Thankfully, hardly any extraneous chatter could be heard during Tuesday night’s recital by pianist John Jensen, a onetime Southern Californian who now lives in St. Paul, Minn. Actually, Jensen chose to address the audience frequently himself, preparing us in the beginning for the “uncompromising” nature of his opening piece.

Give Jensen credit for adventure in this case, for Carl Ruggles’ “Evocations” are tough, declamatory, jagged little pieces in what Aaron Copland might have called a “laying down the law” manner. Yet Jensen made them go down easily, imparting a Romantic, almost affectionate gentleness at times while maintaining clearly etched textures.

Astutely, Jensen preceded Mozart’s Sonata in C minor, K. 457 with its companion, the Fantasia in C minor, K. 475, enforcing a clear, forceful, rubato-laden approach in both, with considerable dramatic impact in the latter work. Unfortunately, there were also several passages of unease in the sonata, such as the hectically rushed development in the first movement.

Chopin’s Nocturne in C-minor, Opus 48, No. 1, turned into a hash of hesitant octaves in the climax, but the succeeding Nocturne in D-flat, Opus 27, No. 2, was more securely controlled. Schumann’s “Faschingsschwank aus Wien” after intermission was knocked off in an unfocused, sometimes-haphazard manner as Jensen’s transparent textures exposed handfuls of missed notes.

For an encore, though, Jensen shifted into a new gear, reaching back to his eclectic L.A. free-lancing days with a competent, complex, rhythmically shifting jazz improvisation on the hit song “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.” That was fun.