MUSIC REVIEW : Technique, Not Emotion, Is Pianist Roge’s Forte

Though he played here just three years ago as soloist in a concerto, pianist Pascal Roge’s last local solo recital took place in 1976 in Royce Hall at UCLA. At that time, one speculated on just what kind of pianist the then-24-year-old French musician would eventually become.

The future has arrived, and Roge’s second Southland recital, Wednesday night at Ambassador Auditorium, answered our questions.

He remains a reliable, unperturbable technician, one whose seamless delivery of even the most convoluted mechanical passage comes across smoothly. He plays with a natural and unforced musical rhetoric, letting the scores he chooses make their own points. In his Ambassador program, which mixed music by Schumann, Beethoven, Faure, Satie, Ravel and Poulenc, he seemed comfortable in differing idioms.

All Roge’s playing lacks is strong emotional projection, a sense of destiny, the light of charisma and a gift for sharing music with his listeners. His skills apparently do not include the ability to seduce an audience, or to raise his own artistic temperature measurably above the mundane.

Beginning a recital with Schumann’s “Kinderszenen” is a good idea if the pianist has made these meditations on childhood his own personal expressions--they are, of course, not children’s pieces. Roge did not seem to have done this, and the suite emerged simultaneously fussy and unfocused. Then, his “Appassionata” Sonata, nicely paced and technically immaculate, became handsome rather than convincing.

The most engaging moments arrived with Faure’s haunting E-flat-minor Nocturne and with three of Satie’s stately “Gnossiennes”; four slow movements in a row could have been too much of a good thing, yet these charmers held the ear.

The Sonatine of Ravel and Poulenc’s jolly/tawdry “Les Soirees de Nazelles,” in good-natured performances, concluded the program proper. Here, as before, urbanity and artistic honesty marked Roge’s readings. All they missed was magic.