Pianist Francis Ably Navigates Rorem’s Musical Landscape

For the socially minded, the inexhaustibly quotable composer Ned Rorem once defined concerts as “that which surrounds intermission.” Well, David Troy Francis’ piano recital Sunday afternoon had no intermission and it did have Rorem; confounding for stray socialites, no doubt, but a double blessing for the rest of his attentive audience at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena.

The local pianist’s compact program was consistently absorbing, whether in lyrical repose or propulsive fury. There was plenty of both alternating in Rorem’s Eight Etudes, composed in 1975, the year before he won the Pulitzer Prize for music. The spare textures and warm sonorities of the slow music seem quite characteristic, reminiscent of some of the composer’s best-known songs while suggesting something French, particularly Satie or Messiaen.

The toccata-like tempests, however, sound vaguely Russian--Shostakovich or Prokofiev, perhaps. Which may be only to say that Rorem is a typical American chameleon, open to myriad influences but still somehow elusively yet identifiably personal.

Francis had all aspects of this protean music well in hand, and these are indeed daunting technical studies. Francis also had them well in mind, playing from memory throughout the recital, a level of commitment seldom found these days among even the most aggressive champions of contemporary music.

Lowell Liebermann’s “Gargoyles,” a four-movement suite from 1989, exhibits similar qualities of intense physicality and clarity. Francis possessed the control for the delicate song of the Adagio, the wit for the teasing Allegro and the athleticism for the framing Prestos.

Michael Boustead’s elegiac, classically jazzy little Prelude No. 1--think Chopin at Le Club Hot--and Tobias Picker’s austerely poignant “Old and Lost Rivers,” played with tender care, completed the program. In encore, Francis offered his own gently elaborated version of the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” from his “Pieces of My Childhood” recording.