On a cool Monday evening in Downtown Los Angeles at Zipper Hall on the campus of the Colburn School, Piano Spheres presented a tribute to husband and wife Frederick (Rick) Lesemann and Susan Svrček — two individuals who contributed greatly not only to Piano Spheres but to the music scene in Los Angeles and generations of students. The couple died within a year of each other, Svrček in 2022 and Lesemann in 2023.
Lesemann was a leader in the electronic music scene and celebrated for his compositions. An alumnus of the USC Thornton School of Music, he taught on the faculty for more than 40 years, setting up the university’s first electronic music studio.
Svrček, a founding member of Piano Spheres, was a Steinway artist who enjoyed a versatile career, giving critically acclaimed solo, chamber and orchestral performances here and abroad. She earned her DMA at USC Thornton and served on the piano faculties of Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University and California State University Fullerton. She was Artist Faculty of the Piano Department at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music.
The program included several compositions for solo piano and piano four hands by a range of composers, including some of Svrček’s favorites, like Charles Ives, John Cage and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as two works by Lesemann. Three works on the program were commissioned from Bill Alves, Donald Crockett and Tom Flaherty in remembrance of Svrček and Lesemann. These world premieres are part of Piano Spheres’ 30 for 30 project to commission 30 new works for piano in celebration of its 30th anniversary.
The performers included Piano Spheres founding members Vicki Ray, Gloria Cheng and Mark Robson; Core Artists Thomas Kotcheff, Aron Kallay and Nic Gerpe; and guest artist Nelson Ojeda Valdés.
The evening opened with one of Svrček’s favorite pieces, Prelude to Gurrelieder by Arnold Schoenberg in this arrangement for two pianos, eight hands, by his student Anton Webern. This very un-Schoenberg-like piece, with its immediately distinctive melodies, was beautifully played by Cheng, Gerpe, Ray and Robson.
The next piece was the world premiere of Just a Phase for two electric pianos by Alves, a composer, writer and video artist who is on the faculty at Harvey Mudd College. The work, based on an electronic composition by Lesemann (Hammer Phase), began with a constant rhythm, almost like a metronome (a hammer), but then gradually built into a rollicking, syncopated, contrapuntal composition, which had this reviewer’s foot tapping. It was played with energy and verve by Kallay and Kotcheff.
Next, Robson played Lesemann’s Prelude #6 from Preludes (…after a tenor by Guillaume Dufay), a lyrical interlude between the bombastic Alves and the next piece, the Three Quarter-tone Pieces by Ives. Lesemann composed the Preludes for his wife, so the programming of this piece felt even more special. Robson’s performance was sensitive and heartfelt.
Interestingly, the Ives was the most avant-garde of the program because, except for the Schoenberg, it was the earliest composed work (1925) featured on the program. The piece exploits the use of quarter tones, notes that are halfway between the pitches of the chromatic scale. In Ives’ time, this was accomplished by tuning one piano either a quarter tone higher (sharp) or by tuning one of the two pianos a quarter tone lower (flat), both nightmares for piano technicians. Nowadays, it can be accomplished much more easily with programmable electric pianos. But, again, performing this piece, especially as superbly as Kallay and Ray did, was a nod to Svrček.
This section of the program rounded out with a performance of USC Professor Crockett’s Chaconne, dedicated “in honor of my longtime friend and colleague at USC, Rick Lesemann, and his wife, pianist Susan Svrček.” It was played solemnly by Robson in a performance that exuded his own affection for Lesemann and Svrček.
Lesemann’s longtime friend, Allan Kotin, then said a few words about his 72-year friendship with Lesemann. In fact, this concert was made possible by a generous donation from Allan and Muriel Kotin.
Kotin’s brief remarks were followed by a slide show of photos of Svrček and Lesemann and their friends and fellow Piano Spheres performers, accompanied by Ray performing Cage’s Dream.
The next to last piece on the program was another commissioned composition and world premiere, Flaherty’s ConcorDance. Flaherty, a cellist and composer who studied with Lesemann at USC Thornton, now directs the Pomona College Electronic Studio. He wrote ConcorDance “in loving memory of Susan Svrček, stellar pianist and good friend.” In fact, the name comes from Ives’ Concord Sonata, which was a favorite of Svrček’s. In her performance, Cheng expressed what Flaherty tried to capture in his piece: “Susan’s passion, warmth, exuberance, her giddy joy in making music, and her explosive laughter.”
The program concluded with a performance of Lesemann’s [bar code] (dance music for two pianos). This piece is in a dance form, with a nod to the boogie-woogie. Again, this was another foot tapper, played energetically by Gerpe and Ojeda Valdés, who premiered the piece with Svrček and traveled from New York to perform at the tribute concert.
On a personal note, my son Haydn was the last student Svrček accepted at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music when he was 10. She didn’t need to accept any new students, and we were flattered that she chose to accept him. He only studied with her for a few months before she got sick, but he was nevertheless influenced by her. The first, and really only, piece she had him learn, other than exercises, was Ivan Sings by Khachaturian, one of my mom’s favorite composers (She was a Russophile!). He frequently played that for my mother, who was in her 90s, and it was one of her favorite pieces that Haydn learned. He still plays it (as Susan used to say, he keeps it in his back pocket), and he thinks of her and my mom (since deceased) when he does.
The evening was a touching tribute to two outstanding musicians who have left an enduring mark on the music scene in Los Angeles, as well as the lives of their students, colleagues and others lucky enough to have known them or heard their music. The evening’s music was inspiring and a reminder what a treasure Los Angeles has in Piano Spheres.
—Henry Schlinger, Culture Spot LA
Learn about upcoming concerts at https://pianospheres.org.