MUSIC REVIEW : Mogilevsky: Skill and Talent

Onslaughts of tone, sound, noise--even some music--emerge from the piano when Maxim Mogilevsky plays. The scion of a family of musicians, young Mogilevsky--whose father, pianist Yevgeny Mogilevsky, appeared at Ambassador Auditorium just a year ago--made his own debut in Pasadena Monday night.

Talent and ambition, as well as measurable technical accomplishment, mark the 25-year-old’s present musical status. But he has much to learn.

Very few pianists at any age would dare the intricacies of Rachmaninoff’s Second Sonata, Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” and Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” suite on the same program, much less in that order . Yet Mogilevsky did, to our chagrin. It was like watching a man drown--bravely and ever-smiling.

The pianist’s fingers are able, and well-trained, but seem not at this point hooked up to discerning ears. Instead of colors, hues, shadings, nuance and articulation, one hears loudness, monochromes, jumbled thickets of notes. Clarity is an ideal toward which Mogilevsky appears not to aspire.

He is not unmusical. He can produce persuasive statements in logical sequence. Yet he seems to enjoy more the exhilaration of complexity, of making what really needs patient unraveling sound more difficult. As a result, he lends fatigue, not joy, to his listeners.

Nevertheless, with his charming stage manners, an easy way at the keyboard and an unselfconscious, boyish grin he makes one want to forgive his barbarisms. Yet, we must resist encouraging him--in 20 years, he could become another Lazar Berman.

For the record, this recital began with a graceful and unpretentious performance of Schubert’s “little” A-major Sonata. That was followed by an unnecessary exhumation of Liszt’s longish, bombastic Scherzo and March (1851).