Gifted Pianist Steers Clear of Limelight

The New West Symphony kicks off its second season this weekend with a gesture of dramatic flourish, but not the kind of fireworks of which extravaganzas are usually made.

The real source of excitement will be sitting at the piano, performing not the conventional one piece on the program, but three. If all reports are accurate, Arnaldo Cohen may be the most remarkable pianist you’ve never heard of.

Cohen’s relative obscurity may have to do largely with his own reluctant path into a brilliant career. He first seized attention as winner of Italy’s prestigious Busoni International Piano Competition in 1972, and promptly received a recording-contract offer from the Deutsche Gramaphone label. The young Cohen declined, explaining that he wasn’t ready to record.

Readiness has been a long time coming. Cohen has recorded a bit--a Liszt recording is available on the tiny British JMP label, and he has entered the studio for other projects--but, given his lofty status, Cohen remains surprisingly under-recorded.

“What is a recording?” Cohen asks rhetorically. “It’s like a photograph of a beautiful moment, a photograph of a sound. That’s happened since early in the century, and it all came from the thought of keeping a moment alive.” And, from his perspective, the “moment” is the essence of serious music making, not to be abused or preserved for later consumption.

Brazilian by birth and upbringing, Cohen now lives in London and for years has performed regularly in Europe. But his aversion to recording and his limited geographical scope has made him something of an elusive commodity for listeners outside his sphere.

Then again, the marketing-shy Cohen bends over backward to prevent himself from becoming a commodity.

Cohen spoke on the phone from Miami last week, where he performed with the Miami Symphony. He has been making his way into the U.S. market since last year, after a long, self-imposed avoidance. His distaste for the States stems from being mugged by three assailants in 1971, when he was studying piano in New York City.

“I didn’t like very much the idea of them taking my money, and didn’t want to give it to them,” Cohen said. “You can imagine the results--I almost died from this. I had a gun pointed to my head and I was beaten up. It was a trauma for me, and I thought, ‘I’m not coming back to this country.’ ”

He finally did make his way to North America last season, when he performed in Toronto. It was there that the New West’s maestro, Boris Brott, who lives just outside of Toronto, was suitably dazzled.

He secured Cohen’s services for the season premiere in Ventura County. This weekend, Cohen will be heard performing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, Liszt’s dynamic “Totentanz” and Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy.”

Unlike many concert pianists who have been groomed for the task from a very early age, Cohen’s background is more circuitous. He began studying violin as a child, picking up piano later. But he also was an avid soccer player, worked in theater and focused his academic studies on engineering. At age 20, he decided to pursue the life of a concert pianist.

But first he worked for four years as a violinist in the Rio Opera House Orchestra. “That was a great help for me from a musical point of view,” he said, “because I played symphonies, operas and lots of piano concertos in the orchestra. The experience of working with conductors and knowing the music from within the orchestra was helpful.”

He speaks with understatement when he offers that his “background is not the most orthodox one you can find. I think I’m a concert pianist just by chance.”

Once in the world of professional classical music, Cohen immediately felt alienated. His rebellious spirit and resistance to compromise came forth.

“There are two different things--one is music and the other is the profession,” he explained. “It’s very difficult to balance both. This is the great dilemma in my personal life.

“So many people can conciliate. My father used to tell me: ‘If you have a hundred soldiers marching right-left, right-left, 99 are marching that way and then one is marching left-right, left-right. Either this guy is totally stupid, who hasn’t any control, or he is a genius.’ Since I don’t have any pretension to be a genius, I suppose that I should go with the rest of the troop.”

Cohen’s philosophy about recording could be viewed as the opposite of the late, great pianist Glenn Gould’s. The flamboyant yet detached Gould retired from the concert stage at an early age, preferring the controlled environs of the studio.

“It’s true--Glenn Gould was absolutely the opposite,” Cohen said. “It’s difficult for me to communicate with a microphone. First of all, music is an expression of one’s personality, and to become a pianist in a room, the whole thing is a give-and-take process. Without that, it becomes a profession.”

A specialist in the field of late-19th-century romantics such as Chopin and Liszt, Cohen seems intent on bringing new levels of integrity to his work. At the same time, he wants to avoid viewing music as work, in the career sense.

“The whole process of musical expression has to do with music passing through the filters of your own personality, your sensitivity, your brain and intellect and [coming] out with a personal stamp,” he said. “That’s why you have 5,000 pianists being able to play the same piece. If I play the same piece 20 times, all 20 times will be different. This is the great magic of expression.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: New West Symphony.

* WHEN AND WHERE: 8 p.m. Friday at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd.; and 8 p.m. Saturday at Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way.

* HOW MUCH: $15-$55.

* CALL: 643-8646.