Wayne Alpern | Modern Music Review

by Illiam Sebitz

The piano has long served as the composer’s site of invention, confrontation, and revelation. In Modern Music, composer Wayne Alpern presents a program of his own keyboard expressions, reflecting on the classical past while engaging in a dialogue with today’s influences. The result is a remarkable collection of twenty works for solo piano, performed with clarity and conviction by pianist Steven Beck. Alpern’s music reanimates centuries of compositional techniques and forms through a distinctly modern lens. In an act of compositional alchemy, Alpern distills Baroque counterpoint, Romantic lyricism, Broadway flair, jazz harmony, and rhythmic modernism into something unmistakably modern and his own.

In “March,” the album’s assertive opening. A thunderous cascade of chords of Stravinsky-esque sonic in their declamatory rhythmic attack announces Alpern’s modernist agenda. The contemporary chime of the writing can be heard from the outset. Soon, the composition gives way to lyrical counter-lines and a fluid transition. Alpern’s writing creates an energetic dialectic between force and flow. Beck navigates this oscillation by highlighting Alpern’s rhythmic logic and, even more so, his contrapuntal passages. This style is a recomposition of sonata and rondo impulses into a structure bound by rhythm and theme.

In “Gigue,” Alpern further distills classical inheritance into kinetic motion. The dance impulse is unmistakable, with its agile 6/8 meter and leaping intervals. It’s the counterpoint that shines as the interplay of voices creates a web of linear and harmonic momentum, evoking the multi-voice style of Bach but with a pulse that feels distinctly modern. A central section intensifies the counterpoint, like a fugue reimagined mid-spin, before returning to the playful swirl that defines the piece’s outer form.

Alpern’s compositional reinvention becomes evident in “Variations,” a set built on a theme by the seldom-heard 18th-century composer Anna Bon di Venezia. The early classical clarity of Bon’s melody is soon clothed in jazz waltz harmonies and inner voice leading that echo Bill Evans. One hears a variation of jazz harmonies comfortably supporting a mid-century Broadway style warmth in the middle section. Alpern shows how this transformation of influences can retain their architecture even as they surface aesthetically with different functions in the writing.

“Reverie” is a luminous counterpoint to the album’s more rhythmically active works. A memorial to Alpern’s nephew, it floats in a space of gentle thematic development. The steady arpeggiated figure is elegantly carried as a theme. Beck anchors this structural element with the melody as it rises and falls with expressiveness. Dynamic shaping becomes the language of expression by Alpern. His notating and Beck’s performance: soft decrescendos and subtle swells lend the piece both intimacy and emotional gravity. Even the fade-out, a rare studio gesture in a solo piano album, feels appropriate—like a candle’s last flicker.

One of the album’s more delightfully inventive works is “Divertissement,” subtitled “Radio.” Alpern constructs a postmodern collage that simulates tuning across musical eras, with snippets of Schumann, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Erroll Garner, and Haydn tumbling out of the imaginary dial. What could easily feel disjunct instead becomes a study in emotional continuity at cadential figures. Alpern uses cadence points as pivot hinges between “channels,” cleverly maintaining thematic energy across the styles. It’s a miniature montage that is witty and surprising.

“Rhapsody,” at nearly nine minutes, is a pianistic expedition through Romantic manners and late-modern angularity. In Alpern’s hands, the “rhapsodic” form becomes a vessel for historical simultaneity. He converses fluently with Brahms, Liszt, and Bartók as he builds his theme and chordal pillars, splintering them with thirty-second-note melismas, and then reassembling the fragments into motivic echoes. This is where Beck’s virtuosity is most evident. His command of texture, pacing, and voicing brings to life the shape of Alpern’s writing. But more than technique, what lingers is the sensation of listening to music that feels rooted and unmoored by genre. This is classical modern music.

Across the remaining fourteen tracks, Alpern continues to traverse stylistic terrain with an engaging spirit that genre falls away, and the music speaks for itself. In “Fughetta,” he is playful with counterpoint and cocktail jazz. “Toccata” slaps the piano with tone clusters inspired by Bartók’s sketches. “Masquerade” swings with syncopated ease, “Operetta” gestures toward Mozartian drama, and “Sonatina” closes the album by reaffirming classical techniques within a clearly contemporary lens.

Steven Beck proves an ideal partner in this endeavor. His versatility and ability to render modernism and Romantic lyricism with equal depth yield a compelling performance. And Judith Sherman’s production offers clarity and intimacy, letting the music speak without distraction.

Modern Music is a stylistic argument that makes the case that tradition and invention are not opposites, but collaborators. Alpern’s reinventions are creative, expressive, and joyfully unconcerned with genre orthodoxy. He hears the past not as a constraint, but as a possibility for the spark material to be shaped, built, and reimagined. Modern Music delivers the past by engaging its forms, absorbing its voices, and then speaking anew.

Artist: Wayne Alpern
Album: Modern Music
Label: Henri Elkan Music

Release Date: June 27, 2025

About the author

Illiam Sebitz

Born and raised in a picturesque European village, my fondness for music began during my formative years, when the charismatic tones of the recorder first filled the halls of my primary school. This early fascination escalated into my lifelong pursuit of embracing the melodious charm of the flute; I have even spent time refining my skills at a music conservatoire. As a seasoned music connoisseur, I find myself captivated by the multifaceted world of music. I enjoy writing music reviews to better enable me to explore genres as diverse as world, rock, jazz, classical, folk, and film music, each offering a unique auditory journey that enriches my life and intellect.

In my spare moments, you'll likely find me meticulously crafting my latest woodworking project, sharpening my skills with flute etudes, or inventing tales of fantasy through the art of creative writing. My eclectic interests and expertise harmonize to create a symphony of passion and curiosity that resonates within every aspect of my life as a music enthusiast.