Music Reviews : Barbagallo in Recital at UCLA Piano Fest

Personal charm and musical blandness marked James Barbagallo’s latest Southland performances. And his substantial and sensibly paced program did not mitigate the lack of character in his playing at the final recital in a series offered by young Americans, and given in connection with the UCLA Piano Competition and Festival, in Schoenberg Hall Auditorium.

Saturday night, that program began with Schumann’s quirky but practically irresistible G-minor Sonata, crested on three liquescent pieces by Debussy, flirted briefly with Chopin and ended on the upbeat rhetoric of Samuel Barber’s familiar Sonata, Opus 26. Too bad Barbagallo made so few distinctions between these works, flattening out their contrasts and minimizing their stylistic differences.

The instrument on which he played did not help; in most moments, its apparently limited range of colors--one noticed the same limitations at David Buechner’s recital on Wednesday--failed the composers’ intentions. Inner voices either lacked life or became outspoken; complex lines blended inappropriately, becoming single, simple musical threads; the entire performance suffered from monochromy.

Still, the bulk of the blame must reflect Barbagallo’s own pianistic personality. The old maxim, “What you are is mirrored in your performance,” applies here: Barbagallo appears to be a nice man, a competent technician and a musician without strong feelings. This experience became perfectly pleasant, but not memorable. Oddly enough, it was greeted with cheers and bravos by the friendly audience in Schoenberg Hall.

And there were glimmers of hope in certain poignant moments in Chopin’s Nocturne in E, Opus 62, No. 2, and in the single encore--he could have taken two more; why didn’t he?--Grieg’s Notturno in C, Opus 54, No. 4.

But even here, Barbagallo didn’t integrate the materials tightly, or find all their urgency, or escape his comfortable niche of emotional flabbiness.