MUSIC REVIEW : Few Inspired Moments in Oppens’ Recital

Intelligence and good technique are not enough. Great recitals grow out of a combination of inspired programming, solid virtuosity and spontaneous musical brilliance--moment and audience drawing out the performer’s best.

Such a combination did not coalesce Tuesday night at the Irvine Barclay Theatre at the edge of the UC Irvine campus. American pianist Ursula Oppens had concocted a bright agenda of complementary scores by Stravinsky, Schubert, Picker and Takemitsu, and she played it all with skill and devotion. But she did not go beyond competent seriousness.

Oppens opened with Stravinsky’s Gallic and bracing Sonata (1924), as she had the last time we heard her in recital, five years ago. This time, however, the performance lacked clarity, panache and crispness. The Barclay’s resident Steinway sounded mushy (a reliable source said it had not seemed so the previous night).

At the other end of the evening, balancing the 20th-Century master’s wondrous C-major first movement with the resounding finale of Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy in the same key, Oppens showed that symmetry lives, and makes sense.

Still, she never proved herself a spiritual or emotional specialist in Schubert’s music: Both here and in the Four Impromptus of Opus 142, Oppens’ pedestrian approach, plus disappointing dynamic details and a few scary moments of forgetfulness marred the composer’s serenity and his unflagging line.

There were few redeeming features in the rest of the program. Though one appreciated Oppens’ revival of two of the 11 short works that Peter Serkin had commissioned in 1989 (and played at UCLA), neither Tobias Picker’s Three Pieces nor Toru Takemitsu’s “Le Yeux Clos II” became compelling.