MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : JEROME LOWENTHAL PLAYS AT FESTIVAL

Without being unpleasant about it, Jerome Lowenthal easily managed to dominate the Chamber Music/LA Festival concert in Smothers Theater of Pepperdine University Friday night. He played piano throughout the evening, blithely commented on the pieces that constituted the mini-recital first half of the program, and joined Ida Kavafian’s violin and Nathaniel Rosen’s cello for an incendiary account of Tchaikovsky’s Trio in A minor to top the agenda.

When he strolls onstage, Lowenthal sends out signals of geniality, but when he sets to work at the keyboard he is transformed into a fiercely intense instrument of musical communication. By his oral confession, Lowenthal believes that music can convey humor. Haydn’s Sonata No. 60 in C proved the point by smile-provoking phrasing, surprise contrasts and pianistic facility.

From this one might tag Lowenthal a Classicist, but two Chopin pieces qualified him for a Romantic label. Both the C minor Mazurka, Opus 50, No. 3, and the A-flat Ballade were perceptive, flexible without indulgence, warm and tender in tone, and touched with poetic sensibility.

Lowenthal stylishly wore still another musical hat in Bartok’s “Out of Doors” Suite. It could have been the view of a specialist, so incisively etched were the character pieces.

The Tchaikovsky Trio might be described as a triple concerto, so demanding are the parts. It received an interpretation on a grand scale--fiery, engrossingly dramatic, entertaining and frequently moving.