MUSIC REVIEWS : Barry Douglas in Hollywood Bowl Recital

Barry Douglas is a slippery one. After hearing the prize-winning Irish pianist four times in the past year, one still has difficulty getting a clear picture of what kind of musician he is.

Wednesday night, Douglas’ second local recital, this time outdoors at Hollywood Bowl, also failed to bring the 29-year-old pianist into focus.

He is without doubt a thoroughly equipped virtuoso. He has power, speed, accuracy, a palette of pianistic colors and varieties of touch--more, perhaps than a number of other recent winners of international competitions. And his technical resources, coupled with an emerging temperament, make him an articulate performer.

His musical tastes apparently run to the eclectic--but with greater depth than one might expect from one of his particular generation, a generation known for its shallow versatility.

In moments, Douglas shows the promise of great beginnings. He did so last September, when, on one of the hottest, dryest nights of the year, he played Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony in Cahuenga Pass. He achieved a similar impression at his indoor recital at the South Bay Center for the Arts in March.

Wednesday, before 7,625 listeners sharing a cool evening at the Bowl, he gave a mixed performance, one which alternated impassioned moments with indifferent ones, probing musicality with dutiful water-treading. It was confusing.

The greatest confusion may not have been Douglas’ fault. It came in Tchaikovsky’s massive, but justifiably neglected, Sonata in G, a work of dubious value and limited appeal through which he sailed admirably, but apparently without being able to manage to add to its mostly nonexistent charms.

Like comparable piano sonatas by Grieg and MacDowell, this is a minor work by an important composer, a work to be heard once, to satisfy one’s curiosity. Douglas played it with relish, and surmounted all its obstacles. But he could not rescue it from its own, built-in aridity.

Chopin’s F-minor Ballade, the one holdover from the pianist’s March program, emerged this time highly convincing, well-shaped, passionate of statement. One suspects Douglas is a Chopin player, above all: He has the poetic instincts, the command of detail and, most important, the heroic outlook.

If one had not heard Alexander Slobodyanik produce an awesome, virtually definitive, live reading of the original piano version of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” last October at Ambassador Auditorium, Douglas’ admirable, highly colored and compelling performance on Wednesday might have restored our faith in that overfamiliar and hackneyed work.

As it was, Douglas made it more attractive and kaleidoscopic than most other pianists. For that, one had to be grateful.

In response to the loud approbation of his Bowl audience, Douglas played one encore: Schumann’s “Traumerei.”