Pianist Rosen Mixes Passion With a Touch of Jauntiness

There are flashier pianists on the scene, to be sure, and even some pretenders to the concert pianist title who are aided by hype machinery, but the stalwart Charles Rosen stands for a reassuring foundation in the piano world. At a UC Santa Barbara recital on Thursday, Rosen dove deeply into the music of Mozart, Chopin and Brahms, demonstrating how an interpretive approach can be at once passionate and cerebral.

In his first visit to Southern California in a decade, Rosen was in town to deliver the annual Karl Geiringer Memorial Lecture and Recital, in honor of the late musicologist, a UCSB pillar for many years. By virtue of his achievements as an author and scholar, there may be a tendency to perceive Rosen as bringing too much intellect to the business of piano playing, but there was no excessive headiness this night. Forget the resume: The proof is in the music.

Nearly everything Rosen touched rang true, approached with understatement and a clarity of purpose. His music-making doesn’t, however, lack for emotional weight. He brought deposits of romantic intensity to four pieces by Chopin and Brahms, but the highlight of this program was his assured work as a Mozartean.

Rosen displayed a mostly light touch, a tendency toward slow tempos, and a quality of contemplation that highlighted a different aspect of Mozart, especially in the Rondo in A, K. 511, which showed a surprising kinship to the Chopin later in the program. For good rollicking measure, he sprinted through the For the Gigue in G, K. 574, a brief, snappy flight up and down the keyboard.

His reading of Three Mazurkas by Chopin expressed jauntiness underscored by languor. Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52 was carefully built from tenderness to grandiosity. By the finale fingers flew in all the right places.

The concert’s second half was devoted to Brahms, the subject of Rosen’s lecture, “Brahms: Awkwardness as Inspiration.” Whatever structural awkwardness may lie in the music, Rosen found persuasive means of interpretation, especially with the Fugue and Variations on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24.