Music Reviews : Pianist Karasik in Pro Musicis Recital

To play a recital featuring some of the best known pieces in the repertory could be considered daring--who would risk comparison with the supreme virtuosos? But Gita Karasik, in her appearance Wednesday on the Pro Musicis series at the County Museum of Art, threw such caution to the winds.

For this pianist, Beethoven’s “Appassionata” and Chopin’s Fantasy-Impromptu and B-flat-minor Scherzo made perfectly reasonable choices. Searching the unbeaten path apparently held little interest.

Even for Karasik’s opening Scarlatti group the most familiar sonatas turned up. But she played them beautifully--and with stylistic correctness. The rests became breathless expressions of surprise, the staccato was cat-like in delicacy, the scale small without lapsing into the effete.

And Karasik’s account of the “Appassionata” had the required vehemence, urgency and breadth, which she capped with demonic gusto. Introspection behind the notes, however, was in short supply. But she managed a percussive clarity and clean vigor for the program’s only non-warhorse and 20th-Century item, Dutilleux’s Chorale and Variations.

The Chopin group, which also included the F-major Nocturne, did come out like a road too often traveled--flattened and devoid of contrast, spontaneity or rhythmic compulsion, despite moments of subtlety and exquisite languor.