It's as easy to compartmentalize in music as in anything else — all the baroque stuff in one bin, late-romanticism in another, and so on. Some people listen in compartmental fashion, too, considering each piece solely as a product of a specific time.
Shai Wosner doesn't listen that way. The gifted Israeli-born, New York-based pianist, who joins forces with the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet Friday night at St. John's College in Annapolis, keeps an ear out for the things that connect eras and styles.
Lately, Wosner has been exploring links among the music of Franz Schubert and that of living composers, an interest reflected in Friday's program, which will also be performed in New York this season. Six of Schubert's "Moments Musicaux" for solo piano will alternate with six "Moments Musicaux" for string quartet written a decade ago by eminent Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag.
"I hope the audience will hear how the pieces resonate with each other in surprising ways," Wosner, 38, says. "I hope it brings the music to life. The idea is to have a back-and-forth, as if there is a conversation between the two."
The pianist's latest recording on the Onyx label offers another such dialogue. This fascinating, superbly played recital juxtaposes Schubert with new music by brilliant young American composer Missy Mazzoli influenced by Schubert.
As he has demonstrated locally in appearances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (especially an incisive account of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4) and performances of solo and chamber works for the Shriver Hall Concert Series, Wosner thinks deeply about what he plays. His current focus on Schubert makes that doubly clear.
"For me, what's most fascinating about Schubert is his sense of time," the pianist says. "That has been on my mind a lot for the past couple of years. The way he expands time is unlike any other composer before, or even since. His music needs this space to unfold. It moves, yet it seems suspended in the air."
That sense of suspension is not confined to Schubert's lengthiest works.
"Even in short pieces like the 'Moments Musicaux,' it is as if the music is looking at something bigger," Wosner says. "It feels like there is a big horizon behind it. Kurtag's 'Moments Musicaux' are also short, but they also feel as if they are describing something much bigger. Schubert really paved the way for later composers to do that."
Although he died at age 31 in 1828, Schubert left a sizable mark on music history with a large output that includes symphonies, piano works, chamber music and about 600 songs.
Several compositions, including the "Trout" Quintet for piano and strings that will be on Friday's concert, are among the most perennially popular in all of classical music. That Schubert also continues to inspire today's composers says a lot about the man, too.
"I like to think of it this way: Beethoven tried to change the world; Schubert observed the world," Wosner says. "He didn't intend to be a path-breaking voice, but his incredible originality had to come out."
Wosner is not entirely sure why he developed such an affinity for Schubert.
"Maybe it was because when I was a kid, I listened to a ton of [music by] by a nonpiano composer, [Gustav] Mahler," Wosner says. "I got to know his symphonies before I knew that much about earlier composers I should have known. When I got to Schubert later, I sensed a strong connection to Mahler, whose world view and his musical language come from Schubert."
It was a natural step for Wosner to build concert programs that combine Schubert with contemporary sounds.
"I don't like to ghettoize new music and old music," Wosner says. "Seeing how composers continue to do what composers did before, how the elements in music operate in the works of old masters and in music of today, is more interesting."