Rosen Returns for Brahms Year

Nearly 10 years since his last Southern California concert, pianist and famed music scholar Charles Rosen appears this week at UC Santa Barbara.

The 69-year-old native New Yorker, author of 1972 National Book Award winner “The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven”--will be highlighting Brahms in a free lecture and recital. The emphasis, said Rosen, by phone from his home in New York City, reflects the fact that 1997 marks the centennial of the composer’s death. Rosen’s recital, which takes place Thursday at 8 p.m. in Lotte Lehman Concert Hall, includes works by Mozart and Chopin but focuses on Brahms’ Opus 119, the composer’s final solo piano works, and his “Handel” Variations.

As for the lecture (Tuesday, 4 p.m., Geiringer Hall), the “title--’Awkwardness as Inspiration’-- gives the thrust,” Rosen explained. “This thought, that awkwardness--the technical kind, but other kinds as well--actually inspired Brahms, is an original one with me. But whenever I mention it to other pianists, they always say, ‘Of course!’ ”

It’s as a pianist that Rosen prefers to be known. His repertory ranges wide--with Schoenberg, Schumann, Carter and Boulez among his specialties. His 1996 recording of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations was nominated for a Grammy. And although he hasn’t made it to Los Angeles to perform recently, he’s been touring steadily. “It turns out,” he said, “I was home in New York only 85 days last year.”

Still, Rosen-the-scholar found time to update “The Classical Style.” The book has just been reissued this spring along with two CDs on which Rosen plays Beethoven’s sonatas, Opus 106 and 110.

“I don’t think of myself as driven,” said Rosen, despite the evidence, “just someone trying to make a living.”