Antonio Iturrioz Playing Godowsky

ITURRIOZ PLAYS MARIN HOUSE CONCERT

Pianist Antonio Iturrioz, fresh from a series of recitals, played a season-ending concert June 14 at the home of Charles Harris in San Rafael. The event was the first in an expected series of concerts for piano aficionados in an instrumental club recently founded by Harris.

Known for his devotion to the arcane Polish composer Leopold Godowsky, Iturrioz began with a clear-cut performance of the Aria from Bach’s Second Sonata For Violin in A Minor (BWV 1002), the two-part lines clearly delineated. So too were the voices of the encore, Scriabin’s Nocturne in D Flat (Op. 9, No. 2) for the left hand. A surprise to the audience of 25 was the premiere (West Coast?) of a posthumous Gottschalk work, El Cocaye (A Cuban bird), the score recently found by Petaluma piano technician and Gottschalk expert Larry Lobel.

Playing mostly Godowsky works, as Iturrioz does so well, presents a dilemma for a reviewer and listener. Godowsky (1870-1938) was an autodidact that likely fell in love with making things as complex as possible, and study of his musical oeuvre illustrates the joy he must have felt combining three Strauss waltzes or three Chopin studies. Yet this complexity seems more comfortable for the composer than hearers as the textures are thick and the simultaneous melodic lines defy easy assimilation. Many pianists cannot master Godowsky with the required panache and aplomb, and audiences can be confused rather than inspired. Nonetheless, Iturrioz handled each Godowsky work with deft skill and complete control.

It was an intimate concert worth twenty piano lessons.