JSOnline.com Review
By: Elaine Schmidt - jsonline.com
The Five Browns got a receptive welcome Saturday evening on their return trip to Milwaukee. Playing as part of the Artist Series at the Pabst, the five Juilliard-trained siblings used their trademark divide-and-conquer approach to deliver an evening's program of light piano music. The Browns - Desirae, Deondra, Melody, Gregory and Ryan - opened the concert at five carefully parked Steinways, playing "Home Blues" from George Gershwin's "American in Paris." The Gershwin, like all of the group's five-piano pieces, was arranged for them. Although arranging pieces for that number of pianos is unique, arrangements of classical chamber or orchestral works for one or two pianos, or for two players at one piano, is a longstanding tradition. A Franz Liszt arrangement of Franz Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade," originally written for voice and piano, gave Ryan Brown a solo turn in the spotlight. Over the course of the evening, each of the siblings played colorful solo pieces, covering a repertoire that ranged from a standard by George Gershwin to pieces by Edvard Grieg, Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Prokofiev and Astor Piazzolla. All virtuosic players, the Browns presented an eclectic program of light, rather short pieces, some of which were selections from larger works. Over the course of the evening they teamed up in duos and a trio, exploring the range of sound and dynamics possible from multiple pianos. The three sisters of the Brown ensemble teamed in a particularly interesting six-hand arrangement of Debussy's "Clair de lune." Four-hand pieces, which place two pianists at a single keyboard, are fairly common in the piano literature. But six-hand pieces? The logistics are the obvious problem. The three sisters played the delicate, flowing "Clair de lune" with a graceful choreography, leaning toward the keyboard and then out of each other's way as they wove their parts together. Perhaps being related makes sharing such a small space easier. The Browns opened the program's second half with their usual conversation with the audience and took turns giving extremely casual introductions to the pieces on the program. After closing the program with a five-piano excerpt from Stravinsky's "Firebird," the clan offered an encore of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee."
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