In the past decade since George Tsontakis’s Piano Plus series began at the Olive Free Library in Olivebridge, New York, I have attended almost every concert. The pianists I have heard ranged from just excellent to truly great. But in all of these concerts, I don’t recall ever having heard the Olive Library’s excellent Steinway sounding as loud as it did at Michael Boriskin’s recital on May 9^th.

 This is definitely not my way of saying that Boriskin bangs. He doesn’t. His loudest explosions remained full in tone and completely under control. What Boriskin’s huge dynamic range served to remind me is that, in addition to the artistic administrator of Copland House, and the pianist of the Copland House Ensemble, Boriskin is a most impressive virtuoso pianist.

Boriskin devoted his program to solo piano works by close friends and collaborators Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, with a “plus” by someone they both admired, Claude Debussy. It began with Copland’s first published work, “The Cat and the Mouse” from 1920. It’s not highly significant music, but Boriskin made it sound more substantial than I’ve thought of it in the past. He followed with a selection of seven of Bernstein’s “Anniversaries,” miniatures he wrote for friends and colleagues. I’ve heard some of these before mostly on recordings. (Bernstein recorded seven of them, not the same selection.) Hearing them played live, though, brought out their intriguing qualities, and in a couple of cases demonstrated that they can be quite challenging. It’s too bad that Bernstein, an excellent pianist himself, didn’t write more for his own instrument. I was interested to hear, in “For Serge Koussevitzky,” echoes of Copland’s “Piano Variations.”

It was Bernstein who made the first recording of Copland’s Piano Sonata, a major work which isn’t played very often. I was interested to notice that Copland marked the first movement “Molto moderato,” an indication I recall seeing elsewhere on the first movement of Schubert’s final Piano Sonata. You might not know that Copland was a great admirer of Schubert unless, like me, you had the privilege of hearing Copland’s loving conducting of Schubert’s Fifth Symphony, which he did at concerts during his decade as a touring conductor in the 1970s. (I heard it in Syracuse.) In his interesting introduction, Boriskin described the Sonata as leisurely, and aside from the central second movement this piece does unfold at an unhurried pace. That first movement reminded me of “Appalachian Spring,” and the sense of repose in the “Andante sostenuto” finale was quite vivid. Boriskin played this whole piece with a sense of command which suggests long familiarity. I was pleased to hear that he is engaged in recording Copland’s complete music for solo piano, most of which is still under-exposed.

After intermission, Boriskin was joined by violinist Helena Baillie in Debussy’s Violin Sonata. This piece, Debussy’s last, has an unusual combination of Debussy’s typical “impressionist” style (a term he rejected) with “neo-classical” (actually neo-Baroque) linearity. Baillie and Boriskin did an excellent job of capturing the seemingly contradictory qualities in this wonderful music.

As Boriskin told us, the first piece of published music credited to Leonard Bernstein was his solo piano transcription of Copland’s “El Salon Mexico.” (Bernstein also made one for two pianos.) I liked this arrangement a lot. Copland’s original loses some of its vivid color when removed from the orchestra, but it gained emphasis on its jagged rhythms and its enlivening dissonance. Copland conducted this piece at the concert I heard in Syracuse, and I had the impression that he must have offered the drummer a bonus if he could break the bass drum, so loud was it. (Great accent!) Bernstein captured this effect with a tone cluster in the bass. Boriskin played with the virtuosity Bernstein required, and here most of all his tremendous dynamic range served the music.

After the concert I asked Baillie why, if she plays chamber music in the Hudson Valley as her brief bio stated, I hadn’t heard her before. She told me she will be curating and participating in a series at Tempo, a new venue in Kingston. I’ll be looking forward to that! Maybe she can coax Boriskin got join her.