MUSIC REVIEW : PETER SERKIN IN RECITAL AT PAVILION

At his recital in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Tuesday, Peter Serkin asserted his own offbeat ideas of programming by mingling Bach with such mildly daring composers as Wolpe, Takemitsu and Messiaen to open the proceedings.

After that, he defied comparison with his famous father, Rudolf, by playing one of the elder Serkin’s most celebrated re-creations: Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations.

Serkin junior’s version strayed widely from the paths set by Serkin senior. He accomplished the considerable feat of miniaturizing the Variations, and in the process often dwarfed the giant.

Even if conventionally oriented, Peter Serkin’s piano style might not do Beethoven full service. His tone is not robust enough, and the mellow mystery of Beethoven becomes a Romantic kind of whispering. The demonic urge is vitiated by long pauses between sections and the iron-bound continuity gets lost in twilight musings. It would be a convincing approach for the Chopin Preludes, but for the “Diabelli” it was all too muted, too intellectualized, too undramatic.

Of course, Serkin had mastered the task according to his lights, but the big virtuosic moments, such as the left-hand octaves, were all politely minimized. And there had been so much etherealizing earlier, that when the final transcendent variation arrived it had already shot its mark.

The opening Bach, a prelude and fugue in G, was hampered by a buzzing Steinway that had to be repaired during intermission. Wolpe’s “From Book IV: Broken Sequences” left no very urgent impression. Takemitsu’s “Rain Tree Sketch” promoted watery impressionism. Messiaen wrote pianistically more grateful pieces than “Canteyodjaya,” but Serkin’s fingers were fully at home in the idiom, though the color applications were a bit sparse.

A Chopin mazurka in C was the sole encore.