Dance and Music Reviews : Jeffrey Kahane in Recital at Royce Hall

Attracting an audience that has heard him progress before its very own ears, pianist Jeffrey Kahane moved yet another step up the ladder to excellence Saturday at Royce Hall, UCLA. This time the native Angeleno played with an altogether remarkable boldness and authority, qualities that may not always have been in evidence before.

From the opening, Mendelssohn’s “Variations Seriuses,” he stamped out a profile that remained nearly throughout. He pursued and won, on his Falcone instrument, a graphic perfection of these big-boned epigrams.

One might even think that astute programming dictated the Mendelssohn as a guidepost to the West Coast premiere of Leon Kirchner’s “Five Pieces.” Scriabinesque in their sudden rushes of florid melodrama but Schoenbergian in their fragmented materials and moods, they provided the right stuff for Kahane, who played them with the fierce fury of Armageddon. This was dazzling pianism.

It’s possible, however, that he was not in the properly seraphic mood for Schubert’s G-major Sonata, Opus 78--the communings of the first movement sounded somewhat absent-minded, although there were some lovely, fragile moments in the trio of the Andante.

But for Chopin’s “Polonaise-Fantaisie,” played with the depth and elegant virility reminiscent of his teacher, Jakob Gimpel, Kahane was definitely in contact. And with his fingers well warmed to the task, he went on to four preludes by Rachmaninoff, issuing torrents of bursting sound with gusto.