MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Smorodinova in U.S. Debut

There is a myth in the world of piano-playing that great technicians are not great musicians--and vice versa. The small amount of truth in that myth makes it dangerous.

In fact, one of the ineluctable keys to the highest plateaus of musical achievement is technical superiority, perfection by definition being unattainable.

Because of misunderstanding of these matters, however, both outstanding technicians and first-rate musical minds sometimes are simplistically denigrated to arbitrary and limiting categories, while the truth is that greatness, when it happens, combines many superior qualities, all of them difficult of achievement.

All these thoughts came into focus Thursday night, when Irina Smorodinova, the veteran Soviet pianist, made her United States debut at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.

Now 51, Smorodinova--a student of the late Emil Gilels and reportedly one of his favorite pupils--would seem to be neither a great musician nor a flawless technician. Yet she held one’s interest more or less steadily through her generous and handsomely played program.

That agenda offered only music by Czerny and Rachmaninoff: the first three books of etudes of Opus 740, five Preludes and the Variations on a Theme by Corelli--not exactly a program by which one can get to know a pianist.

Yet these works implied at least a portion of Smorodinova’s interests, dynamic range and temperamental affinities. Except in moments, she is not a heart-on-sleeve pianist, or one who touches the listener. Efficacious in delivery, sometimes strident of sound, she may indicate emotional content, but usually eschews its display.

In playing the first 25 of the 50 etudes of Opus 740, the attractive musician showed her admirable stamina and digital control--along with some very harsh tone and a surprising number of clinkers.

Because these teaching pieces--all of them fast and in Czerny’s conventional harmonic style--are varied in key, tempo, movement and texture, it is no strain or imposition to listen to 25 before intermission, though one might prefer a heavy dose of Cesar Cui or Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Even so, one wag, leaving the hall at the break, was heard to mutter: “Vote No on Prop. 26.”

Similarly, Smorodinova indicated the beauties, as well as some quirky details, in excerpts from Rachmaninoff’s Preludes, Opus 23, and in his “Corelli” Variations.

This last became her finest moment, through directness of statement, a sense of continuity and a playing-out of the emotional colors which course through the work.

Alas, after that, when noisy approval came from the audience, the encores the pianist chose were not by Chopin, Brahms or Prokofiev--as one might have wished--but became two of the pieces Smorodinova had already played, the final Etude from Book III of Czerny’s Opus 740, and one of the Rachmaninoff Preludes.

Smorodinova will reappear at Ambassador on Thursday, this time to play the last 25 of the Opus 740 Etudes, two more Czerny works, and Liszt’s “Rhapsodie Espagnole.”