MUSIC REVIEWS : TAUB PIANO RECITAL AT COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

Pianist Robert Taub is perhaps best known to Southern California audiences as an interpreter of contemporary music. His recordings, however, feature the music of Schumann as well as that of Babbitt, and his recital Wednesday evening at the County Museum of Art was firmly locked in a traditional, Romantic mode.

Taub took the Bing Theater stage for each work with an unvarying air of almost mannered abstraction, which he maintained despite serious distractions. Lighting problems caused the concert to begin late and the house lights to stay up, and various untoward noises and alarms further disturbed the proceedings.

There was much in Taub’s program to excuse, and even encourage, hypersensitive indulgence. It was not as stylistically uniform an agenda, however, as Taub seemed to find it.

The Juilliard-trained pianist’s very real gift for lyric rapture made the Adagio the center of Beethoven’s First Sonata (in F minor, Opus 2, No. 1). He brought cleansing fire to the main theme of the last movement, but otherwise left the familiar piece sounding curiously subdued and deliberate.

That was not through lack of power, for the other big works--Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata and Chopin’s G-minor Ballade--revealed ample strength. They were beset with ambiguous textures, however, and misplaced rubato undermined the approaches to climaxes.

Not surprisingly, the Intermezzos of Brahms’ Opus 116 fared better than the Capriccios. Wherever soulful nuance sufficed, Taub triumphed. Elsewhere, a sort of studied parlor passion substituted for direct emotional drive.

Even in such amenable works as Chopin’s Opus 27 Nocturnes, Taub displayed a tendency to smother lyric freedom in a cloud of dreamy artifice. The want of a cutting edge, as distinct from mere volume, also inhibited the full effect of two Etudes by Scriabin.

This taxing schedule produced some technical lapses, particularly in the second, Scriabin/Chopin half. But generally, Taub played with clarity and precision, keeping control of color and articulation at the most restrained dynamic levels.

Taub’s playing seemed calculated more to leave his listeners sighing than cheering. Two encores, however, brought most of them to their feet.