Doris Stevenson, piano

The Williams College Department of Music presents Doris Stevenson in a solo piano recital on Friday, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m., in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall on the college campus. The event is free.

Ms. Stevenson presents the Williamstown premiere of David Kechley’s Pogled u Budućnost/Pogled u Prošlost: Seven Piano Pieces from Sarajevo, a work the composer wrote especially for Ms. Stevenson. The two have been collaborators for 25 years and in this piece the composer uses musical ideas from several works Ms. Stevenson has performed and recorded in the past. At the same time, the pieces reflect the composer’s impressions of a recent stay in Bosnia. The title’s English translation, Looking Forward/Looking Back, refers to the dichotomy of a city, which desperately wants to move forward into the twenty-first century, but at the same time does not want to forget the tragedy that occurred there at the end of the twentieth-century. Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote in a review of Ms. Stevenson’s recent New York City premiere of the pieces, “In the early movements playful sections collapse into anxious, dark writing, and in the later movements the music’s tensions gradually clear…”

Doris Stevenson also performs excerpts from Allen Shawn’s Childhood Scenes. Written in 2002 for pianist Yoshiko Sato, the work comprises twelve short movements.  The individual sections are transparent, often angular, and sometimes lyrical, their musical idiom lying in the ambiguous territory between tonality and atonality. The piece creates a satisfying whole, and  avoids sentimentality by evoking childhood memories with an almost pitiless clarity.

The program concludes with Frederic Rzewski’s De Profundis, a dramatic musical setting of Oscar Wilde’s writings from prison. The theatrical piece has Ms. Stevenson speaking words and utterances interspersed with bursting technical passages.

Doris Stevenson, Artist-in-Residence in piano, is a member of the Williams Chamber Players. Career as recitalist and chamber musician. Has performed as soloist with the Boston Pops, in New York at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall and Weill Hall, in major cities in 46 states, in Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Salle Pleyel in Paris, on National Public Radio and Public Television.

Recordings: Brahms Cello Sonatas with N. Rosen-JMR Records, Saint Saens Violin Sonatas with A. Cardenes–Arabesque, complete Mendelssohn Cello Works with Jeffrey Solow-Centaur, “Orientale” with N. Rosen for Northstar, “Reverie” with N. Rosen for JMR. Master of Music, University of Southern California.

Event Program