Music and Dance Reviews : Ivo Pogorelich in Mixed Program at Chandler Pavilion

As he has been demonstrating here for nearly a decade, Ivo Pogorelich is no ordinary pianist. The celebrated musician from Yugoslavia, who played his first Los Angeles recital in Hollywood Bowl seven years ago--and made his orchestral debut there in 1981--creates provocative programs, then plays them in a highly individual manner.

But he is no mere weirdo. Through a number of local appearances during the 1980s, Pogorelich proved his seriousness, his superior artistic and technical accomplishment and the special edge of a probing musical mind.

He did so again Sunday night, when he returned to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center, in a mixed menu of not bonbons but protein-rich hors d’oeuvres.

The cavernous reaches of the Pavilion seemed to hamper the pianist’s love of nuance, and an apparently recalcitrant piano gave the impression of diminishing his coloristic resources. Yet, at the end, Pogorelich had triumphed. Again.

Which is not to say the 31-year-old musician justified the strange repertory he had put together for this recital. In some previous appearances, Pogorelich has arranged oddball programs, then proved their worth in the execution. Not this time.

This agenda--consisting of Haydn’s D-major Sonata, Hob. XVI: 19; Brahms’ Opus 117 Intermezzos; three of Liszt’s “Transcendental” Etudes; six Scarlatti sonatas; three Mazurkas by Chopin; Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata, and Balakirev’s dense “Islamey” Fantasy--did move in a followable line from quiet to climax. Still, it proved a strange stew: too many flavors, all dominant, all competing.

Where Pogorelich succeeds best is in scores at once technically challenging and emotionally/intellectually powerful: Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin. His strong personality tends to crush weak-minded pieces.

He certainly brought nothing new or interesting to the blockbuster Liszt etudes he played, or to Balakirev’s fabled but dumb Fantasy. He merely jumped their hurdles, clearly choosing not to think while doing so, and leaving them largely uncolored.

Music by Haydn, Brahms and Chopin engaged him more, and over these works he pored. Too much so, perhaps, when he got to the B-flat-minor Intermezzo, taken at so slow a pace it seemed to resemble a dissection of Brahms, hair by hair. But the pianist netted beauteous results in the surrounding intermezzos, wherein his loving re-examination of the musical materials made sense.

He also kept the larger aspects of the Haydn sonata in clear perspective--though he flirted with inaudibility in the opening movement--and delivered genuine stylishness in a loving reconsideration of the Opus 59 Mazurkas. His choice of six contrasting Scarlatti sonatas could not have been more felicitous; here, as in the Haydn work, he found a wealth of details to illuminate.

There was a price for such illumination, however. Pogorelich, in the second half of his program, went from group to group--from Scarlatti to Chopin, for instance--without acknowledging his audience, or their need to applaud. He did not stand, or leave the bench; he merely stared at the keyboard, then resumed playing. Strange behavior, and worse: rude behavior.