On the approach of Halloween, that time of released spirits, Jenny Lin unveiled new work by William Bolcom in a concert for the ages. The pianist on Oct. 2 at Hudson Hall performed the Pulitzer-winning composer’s ‘Suite of Preludes’, composed during the pandemic. The evening doubled as a celebration of the work of Philip Glass, a seminal influence on Lin’s repertoire and career. The result is a remarkable tribute to two American composing legends, both of whom Lin has worked with extensively.

Lin opened with Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag, a tease for the “unrepentant eclecticism” for which the composer is known, fusing romantic musical style with classic rag, its syncopated rhythms literally jumbling moods.

The first of the nine movements, Melancholy Waltz, swings open like a creaky mansion door into a world of odd tonalities and dissonances. Arabesques picks up the baton with its musical complement, spritely hints of a smorgasbord of emotion to come. Lin, always disciplined, plays the graceful narrator, her timing beyond calibration, splitting milliseconds.  

True to form, each prelude could stand alone while each also suggests the start of something longer and more complex. Bolcom, a rebel at heart who once caused controversy by including rock-’n-roll elements in one of his early string quartets, disturbing the sensibilities of faculty members of the Paris Conservatoire, seems to enjoy unpredictability. Light Fantastic, the next movement, raises new questions with almost every measure, including whether the meanderings of the right hand constitute a melody or a refusal to create one, and whether these thoughts continue previous movements or depart from them. The effect is mesmerizing.

Also inspiring for anyone wondering if the well of creativity dries up. Bolcom was literally born into failure, the grandson of a lumber baron whose mills had petered out. Classically trained, he was equally attracted to popular songs, country music, folk, jazz and Broadway. He hit a kind of persona jackpot when he discovered Scott Joplin, “the first American who was able take all these various sources of music and synthesize them.”

That spring of eclecticism still bubbles in these preludes which range in mood from furious to ruminative to racing. Though no one says so, it’s hard not to listen to some of those dissonant chords and downwardly sliding scales in movements with names like Litany and Will. This Ever End and not wonder if the pandemic itself played an occasional role not just as a composing opportunity, but the subject.

Watching Lin in performance is a master class in power and precision, tonal shading and the kind of timing that sets Big Ben. Bolcom watched the premiere via livestream at home in Michigan with his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. 

“The past year and a half, has been really difficult for many,” Lin told the audience. “And for someone like Mr. Bolcom, he normally would be working on all the commission deadlines for orchestras, for theater piece opera. Because of the pandemic, all of a sudden everything was rescheduled and he found himself with this block of time where he was able to work on something that he wanted to work on.”

The two composers have been friends since they met in the mid-1960s while studying with legendary teachers, Glass with Nadia Boulanger and Bolcom with composer Darius Milhaud. 

“It’s so difficult to express the privilege of working with a living composer,” Lin said. “It’s as if Beethoven were right there and I could ask him questions.”

The second half of the concert begins with two pieces Glass composed for the 2002 film, The Hours. The pulsating legato of both reflects a relatively lush period in Glass’ peripatetic journey, having rejected modernism in favor of “repetitive structures,” the phrase he preferred to minimalism, characterized by driving ostinatos on a bed of harmony. 

She followed with the hypnotic Passacaglia (2017), part of the fertile last dozen years in which the 84-year-old Glass has composed operas, concertos and symphonies. Always the messenger and never the message, Lin embodies the kind of trust a reader places in the best literature. If she repeats the rhythms you have heard without the slightest deviation, it is because the composer wants to emphasize those motifs. If the moment calls for espressivo, her fingers will let you know instantly. The cumulative effect in this piece builds like the phases of Glass’ brilliant career, one phase of another in a masterpiece of erudition and warmth.

At this point the concert had already given in full measure: Brand-new music from one of America’s greatest living composers and samples from the ever-blossoming career of another. But a hidden highlight was yet to come.

While dozens of composers have written for Lin or had her premiere their works, her relationship with Glass is special. Since 2014 she has joined the composer in the ongoing world tour of his piano Etudes. Lin closed her performance with two of these, each a testament not only to her virtuosity but to her entire ethos as a performing artist.

These differed somewhat in tone, the first flowing and elegant, the second more urgent. Lin has played them thousands of times and seems to hunger to go thousands more, as if mining the notes for previously undiscovered ore. By definition, the etude is of course built around a technical motif but played for artistic value. Her fingers drive the notes home by the hundreds, a tide pushing necklaces of foam ashore. 

Lin is on the faculty of the New York’s 92nd Street Y. Teaching and learning are at her artistic core, out of which springs The Etudes Project, though which she juxtaposes new works alongside some of the most challenging etudes in the piano repertoire. The results are as diverse as are her influences, with new etudes running a stylistic gamut from pop-inspired dance music to avant-grade, each paired with existing etudes by the likes of Cage, Debussy, Liszt, Chopin, Chin and Glass himself.  

For an encore, she performed Candyman, a 1992 horror film score composed by Glass and a fitting end to a night of new beginnings. This was, in sum, a night of many joys. A world class pianist premiered new work by one of America's greatest living composers, a rare bright spot caused by a pandemic and an occasion to toast that composer’s only artistic contemporary. A small audience at Hudson Hall surely enjoyed the chance to attend a live performance again, and a bit of that ambiance rubs off even on YouTube.

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Andrew Meacham is a freelance writer living in St. Petersburg, Fla., and a retired performing arts critic for the Tampa Bay Times.

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