Lap After Grim Lap, Note After Sparkling Note

WEARERS OF THE GREEN

IT is an early morning in March and the last snow of the year is falling slowly outside the big glass windows of Leverone Field House. Inside, a lonely figure dressed in a green sweat suit circles the brown track, his fingers stabbing staccato notes in the stale air as he lunges into another agonizing lap.

The runner is Gabriel Chodos, a man whose staccato notes are far better known and appreciated in the rarefied air of the concert halls of Europe and Israel than they are in the Leverone Field House in Hanover. Chodos, a pianist who a Tel Aviv critic said "stands out in the forefront of the world's finest pianists," is an associate professor of music, training and performing for the audiences of the future.

Chodos, who began playing the piano before he turned five, has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, at the Ravinia Festival, with the Radio Philharmonic of Holland, and with the Israel Broadcasting Orchestra. The man who at age 19 thought he was "going to be like Rubinstein or Serkin" is now a renowned performer who thinks his performances are constantly improving.

"I feel that I am getting better," Chodos comments. "That's one of the few consolations for growing old. If you're dealing with serious music you can get deeper and deeper into it. I can accomplish much more - learn things better - in much less time now than I could before."

Like most gifted musicians, Chodos displayed an early interest in music, going to the piano as a youngster, playing with notes and tunes, and pounding out his frustrations when he grew angry. "Even at that age," he recalls, "it was easy to see that I wanted to play the piano." He gave some performances as a UCLA undergraduate and won several piano competitions, including one with the Pasadena Orchestra. "I showed some talent, but it took my talent a long time to mature," he says.

Always "dead serious" about his music, Chodos studied piano more formally while working on an M.A. in musicology. He taught at the University of Oregon for four years and spent a year at the Musik Akademie in Vienna before taking a position at the State University of Buffalo. I discovered that if I was interested in a performance career at all I had to be on the East Coast. People would ask me where I was from and I'd say, 'Eugene, Oregon.' Careers are made in New York."

He came to Dartmouth in 1970. "I liked the fact that things were open in the sense that the position wasn't clearly defined. No one tells you what you have to teach. You have to pull your weight, of course, but you have a chance to determine how you pull it."

Chodos has two careers, for he is both a teacher (in the classroom and at the piano) and a performer. "One of the things I like about this place," he says, "is that I don't feel that I'm moonlighting if I do a concert. Dartmouth makes me feel that my professional life is part of my duties to the College."

He has made two recordings, the latest featuring a Schubert sonata. He also makes annual trips to Europe, last year giving recitals at The Hague and with the BBC, and gives occasional performances for Dartmouth audiences and for events like the recent White Mountain Festival in northern New Hampshire. A recital in Tokyo has been scheduled for the future, and his two records will be released in Japan next spring. Altogether he has given more than 150 concerts.

His introductory course, Music 1, is one of the most popular at Dartmouth. Chodos requires no previous knowledge of music and offers a lively survey of the history of great Western music. He recognizes that the course, offered on a "credit/no credit" basis only, is not one of the most challenging in the Dartmouth curriculum but that does not concern him. "There are some people who take the course for a gut, but they are the losers," he says. "It would be very easy for me to make that a very difficult course, for music can be a very difficult subject. But that's not the purpose. I want to expose some people to some really beautiful music.".

He also teaches piano and says that working with students who go on to be professional musicians is "the teaching I love the most." Chodos believes the level of proficiency among Dartmouth's music students has increased in the past several years. "There are better pianists studying piano now largely because credit is given for performance. Now someone who is rather serious about instrument doesn't have to give it up or put it aside while he's here."

But Chodos' greatest pleasure is simply playing the piano, and if the Boston Globe, which said his music was as "radiant as some heavenly vision," is right, he will be doing so before large audiences for some time. "I'd like to play as much as I can," Chodos says, "because I love to play."