MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Alan Chow at Ambassador

If the litmus test of keyboard potential were the ability to play three demanding, vastly different sonatas with superlative stylistic authority, technical command and interpretive vision, then pianist Alan Chow’s Monday recital at Ambassador Auditorium could be accounted only a modest achievement.

The 32-year-old multiple competition winner’s playing of Haydn’s Sonata No. 52 in E-flat, Charles Griffes’ Sonata (1918) and the Chopin B-flat-minor Sonata was consistently musicianly, earnest and respectful, but neither distinguished nor absorbing as music making.

One had to listen for as well as to his remarkably feathery soft playing. Many notes failed to sound altogether (trills in both hands were problematic). As for passionate sweep, his was a whisk-broom approach to works requiring a besom.

The Chopin first movement threatened to get away from Chow several times, and though he managed to hold on, this was small-scaled, skin-of-the-teeth Romanticizing. The Marcia funebre lacked requisite nobility and grandeur, while the Presto finale, erratically pedalled, whizzed by in a diaphanous blur rather than as the clearly articulated chromatic cascade it’s meant to be.

Chow’s best effort, by a considerable margin, was the Griffes, an eclectic, episodic, craggy, dissonant piece that fails, perhaps deliberately, in its continual search for an ongoing lyric statement. The pianist mined clarity from the propulsive polytonal pages and stark Debussyan beauty from the quiet ones.

The Chopin Barcarolle and Opus-posthumous C-sharp-minor Nocturne, and Liszt’s third “Consolation” passed smoothly by.

Chow’s prize (some might say penance) for one contest win: Tan Dun’s percussive variations, “Traces II” (1989). Chow took with complete seriousness the responsibility of presenting them.