Vosgerchian Plays

Luise Vosgerchian, one of the best of our young American pianists, was heard Monday night at Paine Hall in a recital comprising two Scarlatti sontats, Chopin's Fantaisie in F-minor, her own Recitative and Aria, and Beethoven's Sonata in A, Op. 101.

Miss Vosgerchian's musical vitality has won acclaim on two continents and contributed much to a most enjoyable musical evening that should have given pleasure to more people than were on hand for the occasion.

One could perhaps ask for a little more articulation and more sparing use of the damper pedal in the Scarlatti, but both sonatas--seldom played items--were performed with grace and elegance, and showed to advantage the many tonal colors at the pianist's disposal.

The Chopin Fantaisie was conceived in fine rhapsodic style and its tragic message deeply felt and admirably projected. Occasionally a melody could have been done in a more cantabile way instead of in the mezza voce style chosen by the artist, but generally the dynamic framework was carefully chosen to set off the piece's structure.

Some of the finest playing of the evening was achieved in Miss Vosgerchian's own Recitative and Aria, a pianistically inspired piece which revealed some Stravinsky influence and worked up to a tremendously effective climax of grand sonorities using the entire range of the piano.

Her excellent interpretation of the Beethoven Op. 101 sonata, the gateway to the late period, is too well known to need extended comment here. Let it be said that the transition from the slow movement to the last was marked by some of the most scintillating trills it has been this reviewer's pleasure to hear in many a moon, and that the Finale was played with plenty of Entschlossenheit according to Beethoven's directions.

The first of Chopin's waltzes, performed in the most exemplary fashion with the cleanest possible finger work, was the pianist's one encore.