“Collaborative pianist” is the politically correct current term for what used to be called the accompanist. But Frank Corliss, who has taught collaborative piano and performed this function for years, is a perfect example of why the current term is not only politically but also artistically correct.

I know something about collaborative pianists. My mother was one. Still in her teens, she performed the Grieg Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall, with the All-City Youth Orchestra under the direction of the distinguished conductor Jean Morel. (Many years later, when we met Morel backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, he remembered her immediately.) Yet in her adult life she preferred collaborating, taught chamber music, and performed only with other musicians, not as a soloist. It was her temperament.

Now, I don’t know Frank Corliss personally. But having heard him play four of Brahms’s Op. 76 Klavierstucke in the opening concert of the Olive Library’s Piano Plus series on April 25, I know that, like most “accompanists,” he is capable of excellent solo performances. In fact, Corliss’s Brahms, smoothly and idiomatically executed with particularly beautiful tone, was a highlight of a concert otherwise devoted to collaborations with the fine violinist Yi-Wen Jiang, who is best known as a long-time member of the Shanghai Quartet.

Composer George Tsontakis, who lives near the town of Olive in Ulster County, presents the Piano Plus series as a service to his community. Tsontakis knows many musicians, including fellow faculty members at Bard College like Jiang and Corliss. That’s why we get to hear musicians of such quality in a small-town library—which happens to own an excellent Steinway grand.

Saturday’s concert opened with Tommaso Vitali’s Chaconne in G Minor in its familiar arrangement by Leopold Charlier. I sort of wonder why. It’s actually rather cold, uninviting music, although Jiang and Corliss played it quite well, straightforwardly and without too much romanticism gumming up the works. Still, I didn’t feel the concert came to life until the beginning of Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 3, in C Minor, Op. 45. Record collectors have learned the viability of this piece from the classic recording by Fritz Kreisler and Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the only three sonatas they chose to record together. It’s an engrossing piece, and it came vividly to life in this large scale, beautifully balanced performance. I wished Jiang had played a few passages with crisper articulation, but this was obviously his choice as elsewhere he was as clear as could be. Despite the small venue, this was a big performance, the players in complete musical accord and Corliss’s big, beautiful sound never swamping the violin.

After intermission and Corliss’s solo Brahms, the duo finished off their program with half a dozen encores. The works of Sibelius, Liszt, Debussy and Friml were all arrangements. The last of these was Jiang’s own arrangement of Friml’s Valse Lucille, and he and Corliss played it with charming Viennese style. Sarasate’s Introduction and Tarantelle, Op. 43, showed Jiang’s virtuosity and spark convincingly. Sarasate didn’t write faceless accompaniments and Corliss’s presence added to the effect. These pieces were all on the printed program, followed by a genuine encore, Kreisler’s Marche miniature Viennoise.

Piano Plus continues on May 9^th as Michael Boriskin crosses the Hudson from his position as director of Copland House for a program which obviously, and fortunately, includes some of Copland’s piano music. Copland was an excellent pianist and wrote some of his major works for the piano. We don’t hear them often enough. 

Leslie Gerber, who lives in Woodstock, New York, has been reviewing professionally since 1966, for such venues as Performance Today, Fanfare, and Amazon.com. He also publishes the Parnassus Records label.