MUSIC REVIEW
Nonken Reigns
By Michael Manning, Globe Correspondent, 10/31/00
Saturday night in Brandeis University's Slosberg Recital Hall, Marilyn Nonken performed one of this or any year's best and most demanding recitals of 20th-century piano music. Titled ''American Spiritual,'' her program comprised works by the American Charles Ives and by the English composer so beholden to him, Michael Finnissy, in whose ''North American Spirituals'' her exceptionally musical approach did the most.
Finnissy's music has been described as severe, although the present selections (which also included "Kemp's Morris," written in 1978) are considerably less aurally contentious than his "Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets" heard locally less than two years ago. Nonken's performances, which stressed lyricism, abounded in color and nuance, made convincing contextual and rhythmic sense of the sudden storms of sound and the prolonged buffers of silence, and brought clarity and direction to the sometimes self-obfuscating complexity of Finnissy's textures.
In ''Kemp's Morris,'' the composer has the pianist wear bells on the wrist, a variant of the Morris dancing tradition of wearing them on the legs. Nonken's attention to the choreography of her hands added that extra measure of control that elevated it beyond mere effect or affectation. Ives's ''Concord Sonata'' is that composer's titanic contribution to the piano's literature, and few are the pianists who can manage it. Even fewer have managed it as well as Nonken, who again employed proven pianistic virtues in the rendering of a wholly original and radical work of art.
Like a refreshing mint after meal, Henry Cowell's ''Aeolian Harp'' was served as an encore.