MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Leo Smit at LACMA

A polymath as well as a virtuoso, pianist/composer Leo Smit was for a long time ubiquitous on the Southern California musical scene. Then, more than three decades ago, the American musician moved East, and his visits here, though regular, have not been frequent.

Smit, who turned 73 last month, returned again this week for a sampler piano recital he dubbed “A Crazy Quilt of American Piano Music.” A sound-mosaic it was, with both the fascination and drawbacks of that genre; it also proved a pleasant, often nostalgic, retrospective of pianistic styles of yesteryear.

Seventeen composers--more than half of whom were friends or associates of Leo Smit--contributed to this agenda, performed in Leo S. Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wednesday night.

Among the more engrossing pieces: Gottschalk’s slick and slithering “Ossian”; Artie Matthews’ (1888-1958) “Pastime Rag,” No. 4; William Schuman’s “Three-Score Set” (1943); Dorrance Stalvey’s “Jazz: ca. ‘53” (1981), and Pete Johnson’s pure-jazz, “Zero Hour” (c. 1940).

Still, all the pieces--some less than two minutes in length, none longer than 12--added to the historical picture. More important, they were arranged for contrast in length, texture and expressiveness.

If the listener found no surprises in works by Ives, Ruggles, Farwell or Leonard Bernstein, he could revel in pungent revelations from Copland’s undisputed masterpiece, the Piano Variations, and from composers Nils Vigeland, Stalvey and Foss--whose recent Variations on Bernstein’s “New York, New York,” turn the familiar song into an unfamiliar but irresistible Habanera.

Throughout, Smit presided at the grand piano--and at a studio upright and a toy piano, each used appropriately for particular pieces--with characteristic technical mastery and a sense of unslaked musical curiosity. For some people, those 88 keys can be a fountain of youth.