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Fleisher brilliant in Piano Series concert

By William Furtwangler

Legendary pianist Leon Fleisher packed the Sottile Theatre Tuesday night for the opening of the 18th season of the College of Charleston's International Piano Series.

The audience was hushed for Fleisher's transversal of J.S. Bach, and for some four-hand works by Schubert and Ravel with his wife Katherine Jacobson Fleisher.

Fleisher rose to international fame in the 1950s, concertizing and recording. He soon developed a neurological illness that basically cut short his concert career. After a slow, 40-year struggle, he emerged again as a phenomenal keyboard musician.

Opening with Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" (in a quirky arrangement by Hungarian virtuoso Egon Petri), Fleisher demonstrated his rarefied musicianship.

"Messages I" by Dina Koston, a colleague of Fleisher's, allowed him to show his affinity for the pre-minimalist modern, with dissonance and atonality in abundance.

Fleisher revealed Bach's difficult and fascinatingly complex "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor" in ravishing detail. Bach's "Chaconne" (for left hand), as arranged by Brahms, allowed Fleisher to show what a left-hand virtuoso he is.

The two Fleishers offered a magnificently Viennese performance of Schubert's "Fantasie for 4 Hands in F Minor, D. 940," and concluded with a rousing reading of Ravel's take on Vienna in his "La Valse."

Next in the series will be Russian pianist Jan Rautio on Nov. 13.