From the Mar 10 – Mar 16, 2005 issue

Music

CLASSICAL, JAZZ & AVANT

MARK SALMAN PLAYS LISZT

by Christopher DeLaurenti

In Federico Fellini's marvelous 1979 pseudo-documentary Orchestra Rehearsal, a pianist curtly informs the interviewer, "The piano is like a king on a throne. Immobile. One must go to it and bow down." Slender fingered virtuoso Franz Liszt (1811-1886) paid his respects to the instrument--the supremely mechanized musical product of the Industrial Age--by composing reams of boundary-bursting virtuosic piano music and acres of symphonic tone poems.

Liszt was a veritable composing machine, pumping out brazenly Romantic (yep, with a capital "R") pieces that teem with endlessly rippling notes, pounding chords, stately marches, and the occasional solemn interlude, all drenched in dazzling, delirious excess. Somehow, he found the time to transcribe other composers' orchestral works for the piano, which not only offered middle class piano owners an entryway into making symphonic music but also championed the important composers of the age, including Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner.

Since April 2004, Seattle pianist Mark Salman has embarked on a series of piano recitals exploring the lesser-heard music of Franz Liszt. Salman mingles a few hits (Totentanz, a "Hungarian Rhapsody" or two) with rarities that reveal Liszt as a precursor of the 20th century avant-garde: bizarre, amorphous structures, ambiguous tonality, and blurred notes that conjure an almost electronic aural mirage. I've caught several of these performances; each time I'm amazed at how Salman fearlessly revels in Liszt's imperious pianistic demands.

For his final concert, Salman plays the "Bagatelle without Tonality," the "Ballade d'Ukraine," and a clutch of other pieces, but I'm looking forward to the full-on, ferocious piano version of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Don't miss it. CHRISTOPHER DeLAURENTI

Mark Salman performs the music of Franz Liszt from the Ultra-Romantic to the Avant Garde Fri Mar 11 (University Christian Church, 4731 15th Ave NE, 522-0169), 7:30 pm, $10/$20.

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