MUSIC REVIEW : Arrau in Beethoven/Liszt Recital

In a career spanning eight decades--he made his debut in Berlin, before World War I!--Claudio Arrau has several times over earned his reputation for hard-thinking and deep-probing musicianship.

This week, on the eve of his 85th birthday (Saturday), the American pianist of Chilean birth can fairly add survival to his list of accomplishments.

That list is long, of course, its separate elements usually on display in any Arrau performance. Sunday night, in his latest return to UCLA, the pianist again offered an evening of mixed blessings: stimulation and uneventfulness, spontaneity and calculation, moments of mechanical playing and moments of over-thinking.

The format was a Beethoven/Liszt program devoted to two important sonatas and three excerpts from “Annees de pelerinage,” and from first to last the veteran recitalist applied himself with dedication and a relaxed sobriety to the tasks at hand.

He illuminated the outer structure and inner workings of Beethoven’s familiar “Lebewohl” Sonata with typical Arrau candor, then turned to the more classical lines of the D-major Sonata, Opus 10, No. 3, wherein the Menuetto and outside movements provided a framework of stoicism for the catharsis of the central Largo.

Arrau’s Liszt-playing on this occasion followed the model of his Beethoven: With the required contrasts and emotional depths of the scores being indicated, what the listener received was the recalling of passion rather than the passion itself. These performances--mechanically polished and never less than clean in execution--delivered memories rather than first-hand experiences.

This is one approach, and sometimes a valid one. In the case of the “Sonetto del Petrarca, No. 104” and “Les Jeux d’eau a la Villa d’Este,” the pictorial content of these pieces is not lost through being heard at one remove, as it were.

Where the “Dante” Sonata is concerned, an impassioned, as well as efficient, performer is the best source of musical heat; without such, the work can emerge sterilized. And so it did on Sunday. One admired the veteran’s command of keyboard, tone-colors and technique, but found the lack of involvement chilling.

Despite a standing ovation and loud cheering, Arrau offered no encores.