Music, Dance Reviews : Pianist Norris in Royce Hall Debut

Every competitor’s dream is to win, of course. But what other scenario could equal that ending? Not running and winning anyway.

Which is exactly what happened to pianist David Owen Norris, the first artist of the Irving S. Gilmore Awards and the recipient of a quarter-million dollars, a recording contract and concert dates around the world.

And just what sort of musician would the beneficiary of a Kalamazoo department-store magnate’s philanthropy be? Not your typical sweepstakes thoroughbred, geared to racing into the international spotlight--that’s for sure.

After all, an awards committee that conducts a secret two-year search over three continents looking for “something beyond competition skills” is bound to find a pianist who doesn’t fit the mold.

The English-born Norris, a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and formerly a contest dropout, was made to order.

In his local debut Thursday at UCLA’s Royce Hall he seemed a true ecccentric. Who else would exhume Liszt’s never-heard transcriptions of “Die Wintereisse,” songs without words by way of Schubert?

Who else would program two Beethoven icons--the “Pathetique” and “Moonlight” sonatas--and approach the first as an intrigued physicist, rather than a philosopher/poet?

A combination of the shy and exhibitionistic, Norris regaled the audience with his amusing, scholarly anecdotes. As virtuosos go, however, he was not a perfectionist--fast passages could blur, tone could become hard and dimensionless.

In the “Pathetique” Adagio he used no pedal at all, creating a disjunctiveness to go with his strange phrasings and bizarre voicings, yet the “Moonlight’s” counterpart was sostenuto in excelsis.

Nothing projected oddness for its own sake, though. Norris seemed genuinely immersed in his sonic experiments.

For 12 “Winterreise” Lieder he hit an interpretive stride, keeping “Der Leiermann,” for instance, the starkly ominous thing it must be.

Elsewhere, Norris’ Anglo conscience seemed to lead him to such curiosities as Beethoven’s slight “Rule Britannia” Variations, the “Kennedy Variations” on a Purcell theme by four obscure U.K. countrymen--and, as encores, two British jazz tunes from the ‘20s.