MUSIC REVIEWS : Pianist Pratt in UCLA Recital

Bold and relentless, the pianism of Awadagin Pratt goes even further: It strains the ears.

At his second Southern California recital, Thursday night at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall Auditorium, the American pianist brought a high-aiming--some would say pretentious--program, and dispatched it in what could have been record time. He certainly hit all the high points in two late sonatas by Beethoven and in a group of Bach-inspired pieces by Busoni and Liszt.

But he did not deliver the acknowledged other side of these masterworks: the contrasts, subtexts, inner workings and genuine integrity in them.

The 28-year-old Pratt might be compared to his elder Russian colleague, Lazar Berman. Like Berman’s, Pratt’s performances are exuberant, passionate, musical in sweep and consistently too loud. Where mezzo-forte would tell the story, forte becomes the medium of rhetoric; when forte could suffice, both players offer fortissimo with a vengeance.

This is not only offensive aesthetically; it actually distorts the composers’ music. And in the case of both the old Russian and the young American, neither offers the comfort of dynamic contrast.

In a program starting with Beethoven’s Opus 109 and Opus 110 and ending with the famous Busoni rendering of the D-minor Chaconne by Bach, Pratt occasionally dipped below mezzo-forte. But never for long, and each time without the alleviations of tone-variety, nuance or dynamic layering.

Basically, what a large and enthusiastic audience in Schoenberg Hall heard was a monochromatic performance. Pratt has developed his technique to a high gloss, making him capable of producing the big musical gesture with authority. Now he needs to develop the subtle, and far broader, reaches of that technique.