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The Friends of Chamber Music and the Conservatory of Music and Dance at UMKC combined forces last week to bring distinguished pianist Leon Fleisher to Kansas City for a mini-festival of sorts. Having offered piano master classes and conducted the UMKC orchestra earlier in the week, Fleisher took the stage of White Recital Hall Thursday night before an audience of several hundred for a solo recital.

Fleisher is noted among the celebrated pianists of the twentieth century for his struggle with a neurological disorder which had cost him the use of his right hand for nearly four decades. Prior to 1965, he was a rising star on the concertizing circuit. As he lost the use of his right fourth and fifth fingers, Fleisher took up conducting, toured and recorded with left-hand repertoire, and devoted himself to teaching. Quite recently, he has begun performing with both hands again thanks to a combination of specialized physical therapy and medicinal—rather than cosmetic—botox injections. His first two-handed recording since the onset of his illness four decades ago, entitled Two Hands, was released in 2004.

Initially, Thursday’s program was to feature Fleisher’s newly-revived two-handed repertoire as well as some four-handed playing with his wife, Katherine Jacobson-Fleisher. However, Fleisher recently needed surgery on his thumb and was told by his doctors that his thumb was not yet ready for “professional use.” “What kind of use is unprofessional use?” Fleisher quipped in his explanation to the audience. The revised program began with a film screening of the documentary short, Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story (2006), directed by Nathaniel Kahn. Though certainly not a credentialed film critic, I felt the film worked well to offer a window into how Fleisher viewed his own life as a pianist, teacher, and conductor. The film functioned as a kind of multimedia-program-note-by-way-of-biographical-sketch. However, Kahn seemed to focus on the darker periods in Fleisher’s life, when I wondered if more weight could have been shifted to the pianist’s quite remarkable triumph in the last several years over his illness. Additionally, I felt the story could have benefited from some narration or interviews with other acquaintances of Fleisher. The pacing of the narrative also seemed to assume that the audience would have strong background knowledge of the pianist.

The program continued with Fleisher playing his program of three works for the left hand alone. Inspired by J. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Jenö Takács’ Toccata and Fugue for the Left Hand was moody, chromatic, and full of strong major seventh and tritone dissonances. Fleisher sang along quietly with the melody throughout, a bit slouched over on the bench.

Prior to performing Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9, Fleisher told the audience how the piece came about. Scriabin composed the two pieces for himself while recuperating from an injury to his right hand. Fleisher also mused about how limitations often spark artists on to greater creativity and innovation—truly the theme of this evening’s concert. “These are two lovely little pieces,” he surmised before turning back to the piano. Lovely and sensitive they were. His performance of the two short pieces was quite circumspect and I got the sense that this is how Fleisher would play for himself at home alone for his own amusement. The nocturne was particularly lovely.

Fleisher noted that Brahms created his arrangement of the Chaconne for the Left Hand from J. S. Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1004, for Clara Wieck Schumann when she had injured her hand, knowing it was one of her favorite pieces. Brahms’ “arrangement” of the piece consisted of merely lowering the original violin score of the Chaconne by one octave so that the heart of the piece sat in the richer tenor and baritone ranges of the piano. Fleisher offered a stunning, yet again, understated performance of the piece and showcased quite impressive handling of the three- and four-voice counterpoint with five fingers and only a modicum of pedaling. The audience was suitably impressed and inspired by the performance. A musical roundtable with audience participation followed with Fleisher, UMKC professor Robert Weirich, and Friends of Chamber Music President Cynthia Siebert leading the discussion.

REVIEW:
The Friends of Chamber Music and  UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Music Alliance with Leon Fleisher, piano
Friday, December 3, 2010
James C. Olsen Performing Arts Center, White Recital Hall
4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO
For more information visit conservatory.umkc.edu or www.chambermusic.org

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.