New York Times Review: "Voyage Across Centuries, With Bach as Anchor"
NEW YORK TIMES MUSIC REVIEW
Voyage Across Centuries, With Bach as Anchor
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
DEC. 6, 2010
Few musicians have had such a wide-ranging musical life as the American pianist Stephen Prutsman. In his teens and 20s in California he played keyboards in rock bands and piano in jazz clubs. But he had thorough conservatory training and won prizes in major international competitions. He has explored world music, arranging and composing some 40 genre-blending works for the Kronos Quartet. His song cycle “Piano Lessons” was given its American premiere this season by Dawn Upshaw and Emanuel Ax at Carnegie Hall.
On Sunday afternoon at Alice Tully Hall, Mr. Prutsman brought the strands of his interests together in a fascinating recital program titled “Bach and Forth,” presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Using Bach as a point of reference, he played 12 preludes and fugues from Book 2 of the “Well-Tempered Clavier” and a pair of gavottes from the English Suite No. 6, alternating them with music ranging from an elegiac ancient Uzbek folk song to the wildly inventive 1974 song “Sound Chaser” by the progressive art-rock group Yes, which has become a Prutsman specialty.