MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Kodama Shines in Chamber Program

A generous but oddly sorted, chronologically ordered program launched the eighth annual Chamber Music/LA Festival, Sunday at the Japan America Theatre.

The concert proved more festive and more cohesive in the event than it had seemed in prospect. After the now-traditional opening bow to Haydn, the afternoon was dominated by the flexible, impressive pianism of Mari Kodama in her local debut.

Chopin’s solo piano Preludes looked rather unusual, sitting in the middle of a chamber music agenda. But the Paris-trained, Japanese artist’s quietly spectacular playing--fluent in touch and line, sincere in sentiment--of the first 12 of the set, on a remarkably mellow and evenly voiced Hamburg Steinway became the indispensable centerpiece.

Kodama’s Chopin also became an effective gateway to Smetana’s Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 15. Hardly overexposed, the work teems with distinctive gestures in idiosyncratic structures.

Despite that, and the personal grief Smetana is said to have poured into a piece he wrote after the death of his 4-year-old daughter Bedriska, much of the rhetoric sounded generic. Something less understated from violinist and festival director Yukiko Kamei, cellist Nathaniel Rosen and Kodama in the first movement might have helped, although it would be hard to expect much more dazzle and heat than they developed in the finale.

The performance also brought out many unexpected points of comparison, in form and expression, with Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in A, Opus 69.

Rosen projected an ardently singing line on his upper strings, but anything agitated on the lower strings sounded hoarse and inarticulate. Kodama kept her part cooperative, endlessly elegant in style and sharply pointed rhythmically.

Beginning the program, violinist Margaret Batjer and violist Milton Thomas joined Kamei and Rosen in Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet, Opus 76, No. 3. Batjer took most of the opening exposition to settle into the piece, but thereafter led a warm and supple reading, rich in nuance and beautifully balanced.