MUSIC REVIEWS : LABEQUE SISTERS IN PAVILION RECITAL

Some artists thrive in mammoth settings; judging from reports of the Hollywood Bowl recital by Katia and Marielle Labeque last summer, the French duo-pianists conquered the great outdoors, and nearly 8,000 listeners, with great flair and a varied program.

The Labeques’ first local, full-length indoor recital, at the Pavilion of the Music Center Wednesday night, however, seemed less triumphant. With a mixed but ultimately unsatisfying agenda, one performed without particular panache, this also-well-attended event suffered from an uncharacteristically limited musical horizon, both in content and sound.

To offer a first half of music by Bartok, balanced by a second half of Leonard Bernstein pieces, could have been productive.

But the Bartok half, devoted to the seven “Mikrokosmos” excerpts the composer arranged for two pianos, plus the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion--which the sisters have played here before, with reportedly greater success--never took off, certainly never soared.

And the Bernstein half, ending with Irwin Kostal’s two-piano arrangement of the kaleidoscopic Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” was severely undercut by the same arranger’s setting of five songs from the same show, played first, and by the Labeques’ monochromatic performance of both.

As far as it went--seven items in seven minutes--the “Mikrokosmos” pieces made a promising, incipiently bold, overture to this program.

Yet, the following, expected main event, the Sonata (1937), failed to follow through. Logey tempos were one reason. Low energy, as expressed not only in the playing of the Labeques, but also in the work of percussionists Jean-Pierre Drouet and Sylvio Gualda, was another. Minimal articulation was yet another. Great chamber-music performances do not need a conductor; this performance, accomplished by players of apparently small projection in a large auditorium, definitely needed one.

At the other end of the decibel scale, the quartet’s playing of the usually colorful Symphonic Dances emerged merely loud and raucous, not illuminated. Here, sister Katia seemed to put more sound into pounding the floor with her left (non-pedal) foot than in producing a full and varied tone at the keyboard. Similarly, most of the rhythmic and characterful elements in the score became plowed under.

While a portion of the audience fled the hall, the majority seemed to remain for the single encore, another “West Side Story” excerpt, the “Jet Song,” this time in a boogie-woogie arrangement, again by Kostal.