MUSIC REVIEW : IVO POGORELICH AT THE AMBASSADOR

Despite a bad-boy image cultivated in the first flush of his international career--in the early 1980s--Ivo Pogorelich remains one of the more catholic and eclectic pianists to emerge in this decade.

Though highly individual in his approach to each work on any of his programs, Pogorelich consistently uses his comprehensive and polished technique to support viable, musically justified readings of large perspective.

He differentiates clearly between styles, even when he is seeking new tacks in their realization. He is note-honest and persnickety about composers’ intentions, but unrelenting in his search for interpretive insights. His playing is impassioned but never sloppy, hard-thinking but warm-blooded.

The Yugoslav musician, returning to Southern California over the weekend for his fourth visit as a recitalist, brought to Ambassador Auditorium a provocative agenda: sonatas by Scarlatti and Beethoven--the latter one of the more neglected Opus numbers--Scriabin’s two “Poemes,” and Chopin’s B-minor Sonata, preceded by the C-sharp-minor Prelude, Opus 45.

To these he added as encores five miniatures: Chopin’s Prelude in B-flat; Scarlatti sonatas in G minor and C (played second and fifth in the group); Beethoven’s “Fuer Elise,” and Mozart’s “Turkish” Rondo.

In the program proper, the Scarlatti and Beethoven sonatas earned the most admiration, the three Scarlatti items for their kaleidoscopic but tasteful use of pianistic color, the B-flat Sonata, Opus 22, for tight structural projection, a most irresistible songfulness and the clear highlighting of Beethoven’s fervid imaginative processes.

In Chopin’s Opus 45, and in the Scriabin pieces, Pogorelich left behind all restraints, producing overloud rhetoric, wild contrasts and overwrought readings.

The B-minor Sonata displayed more elegance, if an unfinished profile. Pogorelich’s approach here, as elsewhere, seems to stress color and character, and he usually fills in the details carefully. But not always. As of Saturday night (he was scheduled to repeat the program Sunday), and despite many handsome features, this performance seemed still to be in a period of gestation: still-forming, but not yet whole.