Pianist

Baltimore will witness an extraordinary parade of keyboard talent over the next several weeks, including such younger generation stars as Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang and Yundi Li, not to mention distinguished veteran Elisso Virsaladze, the dynamic Christopher O'Riley and the up-and-coming Alexandre Tharaud. They'll all have to compete with memories of a recital played Sunday evening for the Shriver Hall Concert Series by Nelson Freire. He isn't the best known or most recorded, and certainly not the most hyped pianist around, just one of the most innately gifted.

The Candlelight Concert Society will present pianist Awadagin Pratt at 8 p.m. Jan. 8 at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre.The program includes Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Opus 109, and Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Opus 110, by Beethoven; Prelude on "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" BMV 645, and Prelude on "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland" BMV 659 and Chaconne by Bach/Busoni; and Variations on Bach's Prelude, "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen" by Liszt.Mr....

Lella W. Clark, a homemaker and pianist, died of pneumonia Thursday at Broadmead retirement community in Cockeysville. She was 93. Lella White was born and raised in Salisbury, and earned a bachelor's degree in 1930 from what is now Hollins University in Roanoke, Va. She later studied piano at the Peabody Conservatory. Her marriage to L. Wilson Davis Sr. ended in divorce. In 1968, she married John H. Clark, an Exxon Oil Co. official, who died in 1984. Formerly a longtime resident of Boxhill Lane in North Baltimore, she was a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants, Women's Eastern Shore Society, Woman's Club of Roland Park and Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.

Roland Edward Banks, a pianist and composer, died of Parkinson's disease Dec. 1 at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital. He was 81 and lived in Baltimore. Mr. Banks was born in Baltimore and was raised in the city and also in Harford County. "He started playing the piano when he was 9 years old," said a daughter, Ronna S. Matthews of Ten Hills. During World War II, he served as a rifleman and in the Army Quartermaster Corps. After the war, he moved to New York City and studied music at the Institute of Musical Arts.

Kraushaar Auditorium is usually pretty well filled for the concerts of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. Last night it was absolutely packed.The reason was the evening's soloist -- pianist Leon Fleisher, who played Prokofiev's Concerto for the Left Hand with the BCO and its music director, Anne Harrigan. Ever since the mysterious affliction that deprived him of the use of his right hand in piano performance, the Prokofiev has been (along with the Ravel) one of the mainstays of his concerto repertory.

The big surprise about last night's Baltimore Symphony concert in Meyerhoff Hall should have been the appearance of conductor Alan Gilbert as a near-to-last-minute replacement for Mario Venzago, who was injured last week in an automobile accident.While the debut of Gilbert, the young assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, was auspicious, what really astonished the ear was Horacio Gutierrez' utterly fresh and beguiling interpretation of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto in B-flat.The common wisdom about the difference between the B-flat concerto and its predecessor in D minor is that the earlier piece is passionate, tormented and dramatic and that the later one is Olympian and serene.

"Walter Gieseking: His First Concerto Recordings," Volumes I and II (Appian Publications and Recordings APR 5511 and 5512); "Walter Gieseking Plays Beethoven," Sonatas Nos. 17 ("Tempest"), 21 ("Waldstein"), 23 ("Appassionata") and 28 (VAI Audio VAIA 1088).Walter Gieseking was a victim -- artistically, at least -- of World War II. When the Germans started the war, Gieseking (1895-1956) was among the greatest pianists alive. When Germany was defeated six years later, Gieseking, though only 50 years old, was a shadow of his former self.

Last night in Meyerhoff Hall pianist Misha Dichter, the Baltimore Symphony and its music director, David Zinman, gave a performance that might have been described as "Beethoven with an attitude."This is to say that they gave a performance of Beethoven's Concerto No. 3 that was cocksure and insouciant and it struck a mood that was quite appropriate to the first and third movements of the piece. Dichter took the opening movement's "allegro con brio" (fast or lively with vivacity) more literally than most pianists do. In an age that takes music too seriously (and, thus, often too slowly)

From the looks of him, Tzimon Barto is the only pianist in the world who can play the No. 1 Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, then bench-press the Steinway when he is finished.The enormous bodybuilder-pianist who was in town last weekend to play Tchaikovsky's top warhorse with conductor Gisele Ben-Dor and the Annapolis Symphony probably never will be confused with Alfred Brendel or Charles Rosen as a patrician intellectual of the keyboard.Mr. Barto's playing is too much of the moment for all that.

That Liszt once compared the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 to the story of Orpheus taming the Furies is apparently apocryphal: There is no record of Liszt saying or writing such a thing and the story probably originates with Donald Francis Tovey's essay on the piece.But the fact that this metaphor has taken such hold in the imagination -- you cannot read a set of program notes without an account of it -- proves how apt a description it is. The piano's yielding, pleading phrases do indeed conquer the fierce, stentorian cries of the orchestra: It is Beethoven at his most operatic.