Piano Sonata No. 2 (2003)

There was the Berg Sonata...and as a counterbalance, Leon Kirchner's Sonata No. 2 in all its crowded, heart-on-sleeve passion. Mr. Kirchner is well into his 80's and the piece here only two years old, but its languid, limpid periods bear the seeds of an enormous eruptive energy. The music surges and expands from states of calm into great rushes of complexity.

It was a grand aftenoon for music-making. Russell Sherman offered the premiere of Leon Kirchner's SECOND PIANO SONATA. Kirchner's new SONATA surveys familiar territory in surprising ways. The piece lives at an intersection among the late works of Scriabin and the early works of Schoenberg and Berg. The music unfolds in one continuously 'evolving movement - chameleonic in harmony, it is in constant flux among different emotional states; there is no repose in it, but plenty of longing - it's a very sexy piece. The writing is at once idiomatic and wondrously imagined for the instrument. Sherman's performance was exploratory, daring, and authoritative.