On Sunday evening, husband-wife duo Sally Pinkas, Ph. D. '91 and Evan Hirsch performed a beautiful piano concert in Slosberg Recital Hall celebrating and honoring the life and work of Prof. Emeritus Harold Shapero (MUS), a professor and composer who passed away in May. Pinkas knew Shapero from when she was a graduate student at Brandeis and took one of his composition classes. She is a professor and musician-in-residence at Dartmouth College and Evan Hirsch teaches music and composition at Brandeis. The two have played as a duo internationally in countries such as Italy, China, Russia, Bulgaria and Israel.

The concert came only months after Shapero's death and was actually supposed to be performed with Shapero in attendance. In an interview with the Justice, Pinkas said, "I was hoping that he would be here to hear these pieces." About a year and a half ago, the couple was approached by a record label in the U.K., Toccata Classics, and were asked to record Shapero's work. The label specializes in, as its website says, "unjustly neglected music." Pinkas mentioned that she had a few conversations with Shapero about the project but had never had a chance to play for him-this concert was supposed to be that chance. But with Shapero's death, the concert became a memorial event and celebration of Shapero's life and accomplishments. 

The concert was comprised of three pieces composed by Shapero when he was in his 20s. The two solo pieces had never been recorded before, forcing Pinkas to rely on sheet music alone, an opportunity which she embraced. She said, "We have gotten to rely on recordings and I always tell my students, 'don't rely on recordings, go to the score' and here I had an opportunity to go to the score and bring these pieces to life which was kind of fun."

The program started off with "Variations in C Minor," one of the pieces that had never been recorded before, performed by Pinkas. The piece was very diverse with multiple tempos, varying degrees of volume and a large range of notes. Much of the piece could be described as a tension between the lowest and highest notes on the piano. Throughout the piece, Pinkas simultaneously played low sustaining notes and faster high ones. "Variations in C Minor" was very unpredictable and abruptly changed between very fast riffs in which Pinkas's fingers traveled rapidly up the keyboard and slower, peaceful melodies, full of emotion. Pinkas commented at the end of this piece that to her the piece resembled a memorial piece; a poignant remark. 

The one disappointing aspect of this piece and the two others was that the performers turned their own pages. This was an admirable feat and they did it with all possible grace, but the page turns somewhat distracted from the overall flow of the pieces, especially when they occurred in middle of the quieter sections. 

The next piece was the "Four-Hand Sonata," performed by both Pinkas and Hirsch. The couple actually played on the same piano, which I was not expecting, with Pinkas on the upper register and Hirsh on the lower. Without making eye contact, the couple used body language to stay in perfect unison, as if they were one person. The fact that it was a four-handed piece with many interweaving melodies allowed the piece to be a lot more complex than a traditional solo piano piece. The "Sonata" was broken into three movements, each with an increasingly faster overall tempo. Near the end, the piece got extremely fast and frantic but amazingly, all the different musical phrases remained perfectly together. 

The final piece, "Sonata in F Minor," played by Pinkas, was another piece that had never been recorded before. The second movement, "the Arioso," was my favorite as it most reminded me of a memorial piece. It was meditative and solemn with silences and long sustaining notes but uplifting at the same time. The faster and higher parts seemed to be celebrating a life. The piece ended in a beautifully slow manner. 

These pieces were definitely not easy to understand. They were layered with numerous voices and motifs and you really had to think about the pieces to make sense of them. It seemed to me that the whole concert was centered on this notion of pensiveness. The audience was encouraged to think about the legacy of Harold Shapero, as well as the complexity and multi-dimensionality of his music.
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