MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : CICCOLINI OBSERVES LISZT CENTENARY

At this point in the Ferenc Liszt year--1986 being the centenary of the Hungarian composer/pianist’s death--the world at large has only begun a long-delayed reassessment of Liszt’s stature as musical prophet and innovator.

Aldo Ciccolini’s latest recital at UCLA, Friday night in Royce Hall, contributed strongly to the local observance of that reassessment. The French pianist of Italian birth brought to this occasion the complete set of “Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses” (1853) in a reading interrupted only by an intermission.

As a Lisztian, Ciccolini’s credentials are impeccable. Indeed, Fuller-Maitland’s remembrance of the composer’s playing--”The peculiar quiet brilliance of his rapid passages, the noble proportion kept between the parts and the meaning and effect which he put into the music were the most striking points”--exactly describes Ciccolini’s performance Friday.

Here was pianistic achievement without struggle or labor; lush tone (on a glassily resonant Boesendorfer instrument) used as a tool of musical articulation; genuine savoring of thought without resort to intellectual obfuscation.

Ciccolini remains the most elegant, yet approachable, of pianistic practitioners. He brings melody to life, differentiates between inner voices and accompanimental figures, delineates the long line, and deftly maintains a thread of thought from major statement to major statement. So developed is his technical prowess, it never stands alone. At this performance, it supported the structure of each of these 10 disjunct but interrelated pieces with a stunning but quiet nobility.