MUSIC REVIEWS : Pianist Ashkenazy Plays at Pavilion

Vladimir Ashkenazy may not have deeply moved every last one of his listeners Saturday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but that certainly wasn’t his fault.

Which is to say that everything seemed to go according to plans for the 56-year-old Russian/Icelandic pianist. And thoroughly considered, profound plans they were, delivered with patrician subtlety and authoritative technique.

His Beethoven/Prokofiev recital unfolded with impressive logic, in a large curve of thought. He gave each step along the way its due and nothing more and did so with not a jot of self-consciousness.

The first two sonatas of Beethoven’s Opus 31 served as the first half of his program. Ashkenazy took the high road to Classical restraint with both of them, and they unfolded with unfussy clarity and crisp rhythm, their details, quirks and dramas painted in quietly.

He didn’t seem to find the first movement of the G-major Sonata especially witty, nor the grazioso second particularly resplendent, but what he did find--rhythmic play and elegant tapestry, respectively--proved equally valid.

Similarly, the D-minor “Tempest” Sonata has revealed greater pathos than this performance did, but Ashkenazy replaced it with a pointed forcefulness, applying color and nuance only where they made structural sense. Though the tempos sounded carefully calibrated to each other, the scheme wasn’t straitjacketed; it unwound gracefully.

Two episodes from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”--”Love Scene and Farewell” and “Masques”--provided a fragile, melodious (Ashkenazy avoided all luxury here) introduction to the same composer’s formidable Eighth Sonata, which followed after a brief pause.

This he played with engrossing concentration, its spaciousness and thunder emerging with elegance and unforced rhetoric. He revealed the score’s complications--rhythmic crosscurrents, terraced dynamics, stratified tempos--without calling attention to himself. Even the vivacity and virtuosity in the finale sounded efficient (though spirited) rather than self-regarding.

It was all extremely well done, thought-provoking and admirable.