Pianist Ray Demonstrates Strong Technique and Tone

Piano Spheres, the series that challenges with the unexpected, continues to fascinate. This month, for instance, Vicki Ray put together a program of works written between 1991 and 2000, two of them premieres--and gave each a compelling hearing.

New pieces by Ryan Francesconi--in collaboration with pianist Ray--and by Turkish American composer Kamran Ince took the central spot in this recital at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena on Tuesday night, before a large, rapt audience.

Looming largest on this agenda was its closing, Frederic Rzewski’s 30-minute oratorio--really, a melodrama because it combines musical performance with speaking--named after its text, Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis.” Ray delivered both parts, as Rzewski intended; not an easy task, but one she successfully traversed.

The total work, however, lacks dramatic contrasts both in its musical structure and the subtleties of Wilde’s words, here spoken clearly and evenly by Ray. Rzewski’s tonal, one might even say post-Romantic, style flows rather too elegantly for the emotional content of the text.

The result is pleasant and bland, attributes not usually associated with this composer. Ray gave a performance as full of character as the work makes possible; her facility and her resources of tone and technique remain consistent and admirable.

The same resources illuminated the premieres--Francesconi/Ray’s “Doorman” and Ince’s earthquake-inspired “In Memoriam 8/17/99”--and Oliver Knussen’s “Prayer Bell Sketch” (1998).

At this performance, “Doorman,” for prepared piano, flowed directly out of Knussen’s evocative, ever-resonating “Sketch.” Both pieces are gentle and often quiet, yet each holds the listener through inventive varieties of sound-making and contrasting textures.

Ince’s quarter-hour work--a powerful statement as played by Ray--evokes cataclysm, grief and resignation, often in adjacent moments. One wants to hear it again, soon.