Jonathan Biss at the Perelman

“We as listeners are guests on Beethoven’s emotional journey,” the young pianist Jonathan Biss remarked to his audience by way of transitioning from Beethoven’s familiar 1798 Pathetique Sonata to the utterly unfamiliar Wonderer, composed just last year by Lewis Spratlan and never before performed in Philadelphia. By contrast to Beethoven, Biss observed, “Spratlan encounters things as he writes.”

As these comments and his juxtaposition of composers suggest, Biss is not merely a talented artist but a serious student of music. Nature may have endowed him with huge hands, good looks, and a tall, slender physique, but what came across above all at the Perelman was his genuine feeling for the music he played. Unlike many another young soloist who seeks to dazzle audiences with speed and gesticulations, Biss’s playing was unhurried throughout a two-hour recital; he dazzled through his understanding of the architecture of the pieces. His passion for the music was conveyed almost entirely through the music itself, and extended even into the manner in which he framed the relationships between the notes and the silences between them. Biss is a rare find: a pianist in his 20s who conveys confidence without arrogance or affectation, and whose mark is not so much brilliance as wisdom.

As for Spratlan’s Wonderer, it pretty much lived up to Biss’s description: a grab-bag of contemporary sounds that the bemused composer encounters on his journey through our high-tech world, interrupted occasionally by nostalgic strains from The Missouri Waltz struggling to compete. As contemporary works go, it was easy to take, even if my mind did wander. But I thank Biss for introducing me to it.— Dan Rottenberg