MUSIC REVIEWS : Pianist Hiroko Nakamura in Debut Recital at Ambassador

In the ever-bubbling world of international music-making, pianists come and go with apparent haphazardness. Some last, however--building careers, seizing opportunities, surviving, one way or another.

One who has survived is Hiroko Nakamura, who was trained internationally but has concentrated her career in her native Japan. At the age of 25, she played Chopin’s E-minor Concerto in Los Angeles in 1969, on tour with the NHK Symphony of the Japan Broadcasting Corp.

In a challenging debut recital, Nakamura, now 48, returned to Southern California Monday night, to play on one of the Hamburg Steinways housed at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.

There are many things not to admire about the veteran pianist’s playing, first of all a characteristically steely and uncolored tone, one that offends by its hardness. But there can be no denying her professionalism, her solid and reliable technique and her demonstrable temperament.

What a sizable audience in the Pasadena showplace heard on Monday was a program devoted to nothing less than three masterpieces, carefully executed: Bach’s C-minor Partita, the Fantasy, Opus 17, of Schumann, and the 24 Preludes, Opus 28, by Chopin.

Nakamura’s individuality emerged throughout these massive works in myriad details of accent, emphasis, dynamics and phrasing. Some of these details produced beauty, others, ugliness. Often, they were not convincing.

Yet, even when the pianist’s approach signaled superficiality or quirkiness, it did not veer far from stylishness as regards each composer.

What one missed throughout, besides the all-important and resourceful use of different pianistic touches for different musical colors, was a genuine sense of communication linking the score, the performer and the listener.