Pianist Berman’s Strengths Go on Display in Pomona

Yale University and its associated school of music have had a profound impact on the American century in music. In the 1890s, student Charles Ives found in Yale’s German-inspired musical academics something to rebel against, and that set him off on the quest for creating a true Yankee music. Today, a host of fortysomething Yale classmates is defining American music for its generation--it includes Aaron Kernis and Michael Torke (the two commissioned for Disney’s millennium symphonies) as well as the Bang on a Can gang.

So it is always useful to check in with New Haven, and we have had an unusual opportunity to do so these past few days. Yale composer Martin Bresnick was an eloquent participant in the Los Angeles Philharmonic weekend conference on music and conscience and had new work performed on the Tuesday Green Umbrella series. Then, Wednesday night, in a coincidental event, Boris Berman, who heads Yale’s piano department, gave a recital in Bridges Hall at Pomona College.

Berman is a Russian emigre pianist who has made a name for himself in Russian music (he’s recorded all of Prokofiev) and grew up in the midst of Schnittke’s dissident circle. On this recital, however, he played no Russians, rooting his program instead in standard European repertory of Beethoven (the “Les Adieux” Sonata), Debussy (the three “Estampes”) and a Chopin group. There was one monkey wrench--John Cage’s “Daughters of the Lonesome Isle”--demonstrating, perhaps, that Yale’s American roots have grown so deep that they can influence foreign faculty.

It is dangerous to generalize too much, but Russian-trained pianists do often have a rich, resonant sound all their own, and one hears that in Berman. His phrasing can be ordinary, but he does get interesting results in passages where there are a great many or a very few notes to play.

His strong, fast fingers can, for instance, create a sense of engulfing, swirling tintinnabulation in the trills at the end of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie, Op. 61, or the spidery, furious opening of Chopin’s B-Minor Scherzo. Debussy’s “Estampes” never seemed to stop ringing. But there was also a quiet, hollow tolling of individual notes in the slow movement of Beethoven’s sonata and in Chopin Nocturnes, Op. 15, Nos. 1 and 2.

Ringing, too, was the brief 1945 dance piece for prepared piano by Cage. This programming gesture might have been an acknowledgment that Cage, who attended Pomona College in the 1930s, is its most famous musical alumnus, but Berman has also recently recorded Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes.

Still 15 years at Yale has hardly diminished Berman’s Russian soul. His preparations (screws placed between the strings of the piano to produce percussive effects) were so cautious that seldom was pitch obliterated, and hence the performance sounded fascinatingly closer to Schnittke’s plangent, haunting prepared piano music than the pellucid, rhythmic dance piece Cage had in mind.

A word about Pomona College. It asked for no admission to this recital by a major pianist, and the campus threw in easy and free parking as well. It is rare and special to find a college so secure in its cultural mission, so responsible and generous to its students and surrounding community.