Dance, Music Reviews : Menahem Pressler Guests With ‘Mischa’

Chamber music is perhaps the only performing art in which “guest artist” means “beware,” the musicians’ familiarity with each other being a definite must.

As in his appearance last year with “Music for Mischa”--the chamber music series at UCLA--guest pianist Menahem Pressler seemed his characterful, communicative self Sunday afternoon, without especially communing with his chamber music companions.

One certainly suspects that a longer acquaintance would have allowed these performers--along with Pressler, violinist Helen Nightengale, violist Michael Nowak and cellist Robert Martin--to make more of Brahms’ Piano Quartet, Opus 26, than they did, which in the event remained competent but earthbound.

Nothing radical was awry. Pressler just had a bigger notion of the score--grander accents, rounder phrases, more dramatic shading--than his string trio partners, who provided a perfectly valid, leaner and meaner reading. The pianist could seem overbearing in this scenario and the performance’s finest moments came with violinist Nightengale firmly ensconced in the lead, as in the aggressive and generally exciting finale.

Earlier on the concert in Schoenberg Hall, Pressler had offered engaging readings of Debussy’s “Estampes” and, in encore, Ravel’s “Ondine”--emphasizing warm hues and flowing phrases, exhibiting his distinctive sensitivity of touch and spontaneity of feeling.

The Quartet in B-flat, Opus 40, No. 2, for bassoon and string trio by Franz Danzi opened the program in modest fashion.

Michael O’Donovan took on the featured bassoon role, handling all the display material with creamy smooth fluidity and the melodies with grace. He made the Danzi worth the dance.