Pianist Smit Keys Into Wide Range

Pianist Leo Smit went exploring Wednesday night. Though his program listed Bach, Brahms, Liszt and a little Stravinsky, it proved an extraordinary journey into unknown territories. His selection of works, as well as how they were subtly interconnected, deserve the highest praise.

Smit, a former director of Monday Evening Concerts, a composer and now 77 years old, exhumed several futuristic efforts of late Liszt in the first half of his recital in Bing Theater at L.A. County Museum of Art. These remarkable short works--”Unstern!,” “En Re^ve,” “Nuages Gris,” “Carillon” and “Sursum Corda”--point the way toward Impressionism and atonality; they unhinge themselves from traditional harmony like a young bicyclist leaving his training wheels behind--wobbling all over the place but heading on. They often end in midair, totally unresolved.

Smit contrasted these works with earlier Liszt--the “Consolations” of 1850, the “Liebeslied” of 1849--garlanded music that gained by its proximity to its dissonant neighbors, flowers among rocks.

Pianist Newton Friedman joined Smit for Stravinsky’s witty Three Easy Pieces and Five Easy Pieces, duets from 1915 and 1917 in which the composer broke away from the sensationalism of his early ballets. Here, the grinding mechanisms of “The Rite of Spring” gave way to windup toy simplicity.

Smit concluded with three chorale preludes each by Bach and Brahms (his last compositions), transcribed from the organ originals by the pianist. Their alteration touchingly erased the centuries between these composers.

As a performer, Smit melded freedom with discipline, clarity of voicing and architecture with a moment-to-moment improvisational flexibility. The music unfolded gradually, like a chess game. For a listener, it was quietly consuming. Smit, who last played here in 1996, had done it again.