Harumi Hanafusa with the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra

The Japanese pianist Harumi Hanafusa brought a very different pair of piano concertos to her recent New York performance with the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra at Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts. One was familiar, Ravel's Concerto in G; the other, Akira Nichimura's A Shaman, an intense, single-movement work, was receiving its American premiere.

Ravel composed his two piano concertos on commission. The Concerto in D for the Left Hand, written for the one-armed Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, would be Ravel's last major work before the onset of the illness that robbed him first of his creative powers and then his life.

That Ravel could write two works in rapid succession (1930-31) in the same form but of utterly contrasting character is a tribute to his versatile and supple genius; I can think of no important composer since Mozart who turned a similar trick in so short a time, with the exception of Prokofiev, whose Fourth and Fifth concertos, also well-contrasted, were written just after in 1931-32. The Prokofiev Fourth was written for Wittgenstein as well, but, although Prokofiev's earlier concertos are all repertory staples, neither of his last two has found particular favor (Wittgenstein didn't like the Fourth, either).

Diminutive but striking

The Ravel concertos, particularly the G major, are of course cornerstones of the modern literature. They are also among his very few orchestral works without a programmatic title and theme.

Hanafusa, diminutive but striking in a red dress, brought off the G major with considerable energy and aplomb. It's such a familiar and ingratiating piece, with its jazz-inflected snap and elegance, that it's easy to overlook how difficult it is to bring off properly.

Hanafusa played it as to the manner born, bringing suitable dash to the outer movements and poetry to the central Adagio, a composition whose tessellated interplay between piano and orchestra wouldn't have shamed Mozart himself.

Nichimura's 2003 concerto, which followed immediately, is much more in the vein of Bartok, who also produced a piano concerto in 1931, certainly a vintage year. Japanese culture is rich in demonic figures, and Nichimura's shaman, whoever he may be, is decidedly assertive and colorful. Hanafusa was given little rest in the thunderous chordal passages she was required to throw off, but her technique was more than equal to the work's demands.

Weill's take on America

The concert was framed by brief suites drawn from Kurt Weill, one from his Maria Galante and the other, in an arrangement by the Knickerbocker's conductor, Gary S. Fagin, from The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Weill's 1920s take on the modern American Babylon. The latter work was written from a distance while Weill still lived in Germany, and, though its satire is not unmerited, his personal perspective may have been a little different by the time of Maria Galante, when he had found refuge from the Nazis here, as well as dawning popularity on the Broadway stage.

The early, acerbic Weill is much to my own preference (as is his Weimar lyricist, the great Bertolt Brecht), but his music needs staging to be fully effective, and the Knickerbocker's uneven sound was also at some disadvantage without Hanafusa's driving musicianship to propel it. The ensemble is a work in progress, but in Fagin it has a solid leader who is clearly serious about developing its potential.