High Noon

For the past 15 years, summer resident John Buttrick has been providing a mid-day hour of classical piano concerts at the First Congregational Church during his "Noonlight Sonatas" performed each Wednesday from noon to 1 p.m.

PHOTO BY MARGARET CARROLL-BERGMAN Pianist John Buttrick plays a piano concert every Wednesday at noon The highly accomplished artist will offer a concert today, again on Sept. 9 and possibly Sept. 16 before his 10-week season concludes. He will also perform at the church at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11 in a benefit for the Saltmarsh senior center with a reception following the event.

Buttrick began spending summers here as a child and visited more regularly beginning in 1980.

He was accepted at the Julliard School of Music when he was 18 and studied there for five years. He was first employed as an assistant music teacher at Brandeis University, then was a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle for a year before beginning to perform in solo, chamber music and orchestral concerts in the U.S. and in Europe, while also leading the music department at MIT.

In 1985, when Buttrick was in his 50s, he and his family moved "lock, stock and barrel" to Zurich, Switzerland where he still resides when not on Nantucket. When he first moved there, he worked for Hans Jecklin, a businessman who loved music and had a store where Buttrick said he was introduced to the finest pianos he had ever seen in his life. Through his association with Jecklin, Buttrick taught courses in stage fright and other maladies "that plague musicians."

Unfortunately, in 1990, Buttrick broke his arm and was unable to play piano for almost two years while the injury healed. During that time he continued to teach and used the opportunity to reassess what he wanted to do with his music. It was at about that juncture that Buttrick began his noon concerts at the church, an experience he has enjoyed and plans to continue.

Buttrick's repertoire, which he changes every week, includes pieces by Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven and Schubert with compositions spanning from 1700 to the 1900s.

"I try to play music in the summer that is not terribly obtuse or dense," he said. "It's a summery affair."

His personal favorites are pieces by Beethoven such as his Waldstein Sonata, Opus 109, 110 and 111, and his last three sonatas, which Buttrick calls "absolutely magical pieces." He also likes many of Schubert's compositions and several short pieces by Mozart. I