Music and Dance Reviews : Robbins Piano Recital at Cal State Northridge

The strongest impression that pianist Gerald Robbins leaves is of the music he plays: He’s no grandstander, the music always comes first. Now living in New York, the longtime Los Angeles resident came home for a recital at an uncomfortably chilly Campus Theater at Cal State Northridge Sunday night, in a benefit concert for the Jakob Gimpel Memorial Scholarship.

A taut reading of Beethoven’s Sonata in D, Opus 10, No. 3, opened the concert. Robbins shaped the outer movements through sudden, though slight, changes in tempo and pertinent accenting. He gave the melancholy second movement warm expression, but never overstated its tragedy.

The two Chopin works that concluded the printed program also benefited from Robbins’ clarity of statement rather than showy sentiment. A basic quick tempo and rhythmic precision brought cogency to the argument of the “Fantaisie” in F minor; clean textures and no-nonsense phrasing characterized his performance of the Scherzo in C-sharp minor.

Robbins’ generally admirable performance of Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel was nevertheless too reserved to convince fully. The variations lacked individual characterization and virtuosic elements were soberly subdued; even the climactic fugue seemed hastily drawn.

There were two encores: a soft, dry, magical reading of “L’Isle joyeuse” by Debussy and a joyful account of David Guion’s folksy “Harmonica Player.”