Lyddon Plays a 'Clean' Piano

By John Haskins

February 9, 1965

Paul Lyddon, piano. At the Phillips Collection. Program: Sonata in G Minor, K. 426, Scarlatti; Sonata in G, K. 427, Scarlatti; Sonata No. 20 in C Minor, Rayán; Sonatine, Ravel; Sonata in B Minor, List.

Paul Lyddon, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Illinois, is at present artist-in-residence at Monmouth College in Illinois. To his Phillips recital last night he brought a standard list of pieces which he played in anything but a standard way.

Lyddon's pianism is an attractive combination of deft fingering and pedal control with a pronounced poetic sensitivity. At no time was this more marked than in the Liszt sonata with which his program was concluded. The lyrical passages were persuasively delineated, and when he unleashed the thunders they were sounded without muddiness. It was such a performance as to make one wonder how it was to hear Liszt play this monument of the Romantic repertoire.

The evening built to the Liszt sonata. Two Scarlatti sonatas as openers, soundly conceived and thoughtfully delivered, displayed a romantic bent in the execution, but it was consistent, not at all accidental. The same might be said of the Haydn sonata, which was played for maximum expressiveness.

Ravel's sonatine, which interrupted the chronological approach of the program, might have been the occasion for an abrupt change of style. It was not, or perhaps one should say it was not as much as one might expect. Clean, controlled playing throughout, the Ravel performance showed — as did everything on the program - a laudable thoughtfulness.