Pianist Simone Dinnerstein capped off her Music Worcester residency Sunday afternoon at Mechanics Hall. The last of her season-long “Thinking Outside the Bachs” programs was built around five concertos for between one and four pianists, as well as additional pieces written or inspired by J. S. Bach.
Bach’s Concerto in F minor (BWV 1056), the afternoon’s only solo concerto, placed Dinnerstein front-and-center. She imbued its solo part with plenty of vigor, cleanly articulating the first-movement’s triplet figurations and ably capturing the finale’s sense of drive. The central Largo, with its touching melodic writing, sang beautifully.
For the C-minor Concerto for Two Pianos (BWV 1060), Dinnerstein was joined by Awadagin Pratt. The pair drew a shapely account of the score, Bach’s lower-voiced writing coming across with particular clarity and direction.
Dan Tepfer teamed up with Dinnerstein for the concert’s other double concerto, this the C-major (BWV 1061). As in the earlier piece, the soloists’ articulations were well-matched and their parts thoughtfully balanced, especially, here, in the slow central movement.
The D-minor triple concerto (BWV 1063) brought Pratt, Tepfer, and Dinnerstein together. Theirs was a crackling reading: the first movement, propulsive and rhythmically tight; the second marked by lilting pulses; and the finale showcasing dazzling passagework.
Capping off the afternoon was the four-piano A-minor Concerto (BWV 1065).
Sunday’s performance was an appropriately taut account of the piece from the aforementioned keyboardists and Philip Lasser. The solo quartet’s playing of the first movement’s arpeggios and runs were strongly colored, while the finale’s intensity never lacked for a dancing impulse. The central Largo, with its minimalistic patterns, suggested striking parallels between 18th- and 20th-century musical styles.
All of the concertos were accompanied by Ensemble Baroklyn, an eleven-player string ensemble. The group filled out its part with lithe energy and episodes of breathtaking color – as in the C-minor Concerto’s shimmering central movement and the delicate shadings of the middle part of the D-minor’s first.
The non-concerto works included two recent pieces that drew on Bach’s influence.
One was Tepfer’s “Algorithmic Improvisation on B.A.C.H.” Drawing on the composer’s interest in improvisation and technology, it employed a computer algorithm that responded in real-time to Tepfer’s keyboard extemporizations.
Sunday’s performance ran a gamut of gestures — from spiky motivic fragments to lush arpeggios and slashing chord progressions — and moods: dreamy, playful, oracular. It also offered a seamless integration of live performer with machine, Tepfer’s Yamaha Disklavier responding with impressive synchrony to his attacks and phrasings.
Yet these “Improvisations” didn’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. Overlong by about half and lacking in structural definition, they proved conceptually intriguing but expressively wanting.
The other piece was Lasser’s “Intermezzo and Fugatine.” It took the E-major Prelude and Fugue from the first book of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier” as a starting point and added a new work by Lasser to be played atop Bach’s original.
The result is a dense but brightly-colored reworking of a familiar piece, as Sunday’s sweetly euphonic performance by Lasser and Dinnerstein attested.
Then there were the afternoon’s opening selections.
To start things, he was joined by Dinnerstein for a serene, devotional reading of György Kurtág’s adaptation of “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit.” This may have been the first music of the afternoon, but provided a perfect summation of Dinnerstein’s tenure this past year: noble, thoughtful, beautiful.