This concert could have been a CD. That’s not a joke, but high praise.
Pianist Conor Hanick’s solo recital Tuesday night for Merkin Hall’s “Piano Dialogues” series would make a terrific recording. This fine musician played a program entirely of contemporary American music, and the overall judgement, focus, and skill is something one would love to be able to hear again.
Hanick even played this as something close to an album, without intermission and a minimum of pauses—most for applause—between the pieces. The shape and sequencing of the program too, with strong edges of music from Julius Eastman and Adrian Knight to start, and Charles Ives’ Three-Page Sonata to finish, then some softness in new works from Matthew Aucoin and Samuel Carl Adams in the middle, also gave this a strong album (or even playlist) fine shape.
Hanick opened with Eastman’s fascinating Piano 2. The music of Eastman we hear most frequently is his minimalist stuff, but other things, like Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’ Arc and this piece show a more complex side to his art. In three numbered sections, the first two are romantic, even expressionistic, with rich dissonant shadings and a Schumann-esque quality of melodic phrases emerging subtly in the inner voices.
There are almost no bar lines in the score as it’s been edited and published, and not much in the way of tempo indications, so pulse, timing of events, and even coordination between hands are up to the player. The way Hanick played this felt absolutely natural, everything had clear musical logic, and the contrasts between the more expressive first two sections and the driving third one were marked and well-proportioned. His touch and emphasis, the length of his legato playing and the force of his accents, felt perfect throughout.
Knight’s gorgeous Abide With Me began as an improvisation by the composer that he released as a recording and later transcribed for others to play. The title probably has nothing to do with the hymn of the same name, but there are flashes of the cadential melody, one here’s fragments of “a-bide,” then “with me” like occasional connections between what is a placid, luminous series of chords. These drift around an invisible central point without explicit rhythm or tempo.
Hanick played this beautifully, and it is one of the lovelier piano works of the 21st century. But it has to breath and feel like it has the freedom of personal exploration, that someone is sitting down at the keyboard and moving through chords that are, to them, lovely things they want to hear. Hanick did this, with an easy flow to his pace and just the right amount of freedom. It felt sunlit and gauzy on the surface, deep underneath.
Aucoin joined Hanick on a second piano for the New York premiere of his three-movement Sources of Lift. This took time to find its footing. Aucoin can be an effortful composer, laying out energetic gestures that try hard to convince that there’s something greater behind them. That was the brittle feeling of the opening “Camperdown Elm” section, banging major key chords that felt uncomfortable in their own skin.
The following “Contre Jours” and “Sources of Lift” made much more sense and also had the two pianists working together with a clearer purpose. Aucoin has described the piece as a dialogue with poems by Ben Lerner, so there’s a hermetic side to this with the source hidden from the listener. The strength of these two sections was that whatever Aucoin felt, it was clear to him, and that came through in the songlike lyricism of “Contre” and the antiphonal structure of the title section; each had a sense of purpose.
Purpose and purposelessness was also the issue with Adam’s two Impromptus, which Hanick premiered Tuesday. Especially compared to Abide With Me, these had no improvisational feel. Instead they were very much a composer working with their materials on paper. This was a problem for the first of the two, centered around an uninspired phrase given rudimentary and even clotted reworking by Adams. Hanick could only do so much with music that was stuck inside itself.
The second was fine, maybe because of the subtle hints of China Gates and Hallelujah Junction from the composer’s father. That meant there was the flow an impromptu should have, the exploratory idea of how to get from here to there while making it up on the spot.
Hanick was at his best in the Ives sonata. Probably the most technically challenging work of the evening, his playing was exceptionally clear and commanding. Conceptually difficult as well, Hanick was expert in all the simultaneous phrases, rhythms, and moods. In the “Allegro moderato” he was accompanied by an uncredited bells player—following Ives’ suggestion—in the balcony, and he switched with verve and aplomb between the mystical opening music to a typical jaunty, anarchic Ives march to close this fine evening.
“Piano Dialogues” continues with Jonathan Biss playing Janáček, Kurtág, Schumann, and more, 7:30 p.m., May 12, 2026. kaufmannmusiccenter.org
