Romanian folk fares best in Eder’s Carnegie recital
Pianist Terry Eder has an interesting sideline: presenting pianists.
Key Pianists, the concert series Eder directs, has been bringing noteworthy keyboard artists to Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall since 2015. Thursday evening, to cap the series’ 10th anniversary season, Eder presented…herself.
Her recital program of intelligent, sensitive music-making in Central European and folk flavors took a while to really catch fire. The eventual supplier of the matches was Béla Bartók.
In her program biography, the Detroit native made no secret of her affinity for everything Hungarian, beginning with her studies with notable Hungarian musicians in the U.S.A. and continuing with an extended residence in that country, learning its culture and its impenetrable language.
That affinity asserted itself in no uncertain terms when the program turned the corner from respectable performances of music by Debussy, Beethoven and Schubert into Bartók’s Six Romanian Folk Dances, ablaze with down-home modal harmonies, catchy rhythms and percussive pianism.
Eder laid the groundwork for her Hungarian revelation with a canny selection of pieces that, one way or another, represented folk music knocking at the door of the concert hall. The program began with, what else, a prelude—four of them in fact, by Debussy, which, with the exception of the calm seascape “Voiles” (Sails), all glowed with outdoorsy melodies.
“Bruyères” (Heather) and “La fille aux cheveux de lin” (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) reflected the Continental fascination with music from the fringes, in this case the pentatonic tunes of Scotland, while “Les collines d’Anacapri” (The Hills of Anacapri) looked south to a scene of dazzling Mediterranean sunshine and a theme to be played (the score says) “with the freedom of a popular song.”
There were no bagpipes in Debussy’s Scottish preludes, but there certainly was one in Beethoven’s Sonata in D major, Op. 28, with the drone of a low D anchoring the first and last movements. With its folk-inspired harmonies and relaxed atmosphere, this sonata soon acquired the nickname “Pastoral.” The two middle movements, a spare but stately Andante and a jumpy Scherzo, looked back to another composer with an ear for folk music, Beethoven’s teacher Haydn. Pianist Eder made one aware of all these connections, then put the cherry on top with digital fireworks in the finale’s Più Allegro coda.
The mood of relaxation and felicity continued after intermission with one of Schubert’s most delightful impromptus, the B-flat major, Op. 142, No. 3, sometimes called “Rosamunde” after the play for which Schubert wrote its fetching tune. Though Schubert sometimes ran into trouble when embellishing the simple perfection of his own tunes, here a wealth of melodic and harmonic invention swept the listener happily along through five variations to a touching last recollection of the theme.
Schubert’s Zwölf Grazer Walzer (Twelve Waltzes from Graz) were a souvenir of the composer’s summer trip to that city near the Alps, a waltz medley of the kind he often improvised for his friends to dance to. The waltz began as a vigorous folk dance, but by the time Schubert strung these tiny gems together in 1827, it had become a sophisticated and poetic musical genre, as Eder demonstrated Thursday night.
One is tempted to say sophistication was the last thing on Bartók’s mind as he pounded out the Six Romanian Folk Dances in 1915, but there was a piercing musical intelligence behind the barbarian mask. Eder did full justice to both aspects of these settings of actual tunes that composer had collected in the field, their rhythmic complexity and harmonic shadings as well as their raw vitality.
That same year saw the composition of Bartók’s Sonatine, using still more found Romanian themes. The brief piece began, once again, with “Bagpipers” droning on the notes D and A as they spun out two tunes, proceeded to a gruff “Bear Dance” recalling an ancient winter ritual, and closed with a fast Finale anchored on D.
The composer’s folksong collecting also inspired compositions that were entirely original with him, including the Two Romanian Dances of 1909-10, which further enlivened the vigorous folk idiom with sharp dissonances and complex meters, extending the simple medley style with sophisticated variations. Digging into these pieces with gusto, pianist Eder brought Bartók’s folk modernism to full flower.
In an encore, Eder paid tribute to the teacher of her own teacher, performing Ernő Dohnányi’s “Cascades,” a waterfall of overlapping arpeggios à la Debussy, bringing her well-made program full circle to where it began.
Key Pianists presents pianist Robert Plano in recital Nov. 19, 2026 in Weill Recital Hall. keypianists.com
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