RECITAL-LECTURE A HIT AT BOOKSTORE : BETWEEN HARD-COVERS, SOME SOFT MUSIC

Hillcrest’s toniest used book emporium has hosted diverse events, from performance architecture to jazz improvisations to sedate poetry readings. But with a name like Words and Music, classical pianist Peter Gach’s popular lecture-recitals are probably the most congruent.

Shortly after owners Victor Margolis and Ann Marik opened their 4th Avenue bookstore and gallery in the summer of 1984, San Diego’s annual Onions and Orchids jury saluted their sleek, geometric, black-and-white shop for its “imaginative interior design (that) invites patrons to linger.”

To keep his audiences lingering and returning for the bookstore’s weekly Saturday night musical programs, Margolis regularly calls on Gach to serve up the winning combination of polished keyboard performance and engaging patter.

“Peter walks around the stage talking about the music, giving it a cultural context, telling anecdotes and playing fragments of music,” said Margolis, a former marriage counselor who has been described as a Jewish mother. “His approach is like Leonard Bernstein’s when he did his televised children’s concerts, but Peter is better at it--less pedantic, more spontaneous, in tune with the audience. He brings it to their level without being condescending.”

Actually, the bookstore does not have a stage, but a grand piano sits on a small platform near the rear of the shop, surrounded by stools for the coffee bar. For musical programs, Margolis moves out the displays and sets up chairs for about 100 patrons.

Gach, a member of Palomar College’s music faculty who is serving a stint as department chairman, provides the perfect counterpoint to Margolis’ cultural hard-sell. In conversation, Gach is understated and pensive, sort of a bemused Pierrot. The last thing he wants to do to his bookstore audiences, however, is to fall into his professorial mode and lecture to them.

“I can’t be too didactic. I strive for a sense of conversation, to engage them to listen to the music with me the way I am hearing it. I usually relate some anecdote to get them to laugh, to relax,” said Gach.

Both Gach and Margolis agree that once the program commences, all of the store’s browsers must be seated, even though during daytime hours, Margolis--who is an amateur pianist--sometimes serenades his customers with easy-listening classical pieces.

“It’s important for me that there be a sense of attention and concentration,” said Gach. “If anyone gets up to browse while I’m playing, Victor boots them out of the store. I’m not a background pianist--I work too hard to be a background pianist!”

By working hard, Gach means that he memorizes everything he plays, chooses new and unusual repertory, and has even had his programs video-taped by consultants who then advised him how to improve his delivery.

This Saturday night at the bookstore, Gach will play Schumann’s Allegro in B Minor, Charles Ives’ 3-Page Sonata, and Mozart’s Rondo, K. 511. He has learned that explanations of 20th-Century music immediately before their performance can make their sometimes forbidding idiom more comprehensible. “Experiencing the music right away opens their ear up. In the case of Ives, I like to read excerpts from his ‘Essays before a Sonata.’ His prose is constructed like his music--the complex syntax he uses just tumbles on, an overabundance of ideas.”

According to Gach, his bookstore audiences would be satisfied if he played nothing but Chopin. “While it’s important that they like what I play, it’s more important that I stretch their ears and their imaginations,” he said.

Along with Ives, 20th-Century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski has been one of Gach’s passions. He discovered the obscure Pole while studying at the Warsaw Conservatory, made him the subject of his doctoral research, and has played all-Szymanowski programs around the county, including at Words and Music.

Asked why he continues to perform his bookstore gigs, Gach said, “Pianists spend a lot a time alone learning their music. All of that solitary time needs to be redeemed with public performance, and this format prolongs the fun. Sometimes I stay an hour after the program talking to people about the music. It delays the postpartum letdown.”