Clarity, Volume From Leon Bates

A stolid figure at the piano, Leon Bates produces performances of clarity, literalism and strong musicality. These effective readings do not, however, project all the poetry in the pianist’s personality or in the composer’s. And much of what Bates does produce, as heard on Saturday night at UCLA, is too loud.

Such an abundance of decibels might not matter if heard in Royce Hall, which is due to reopen in April. In smaller Schoenberg Hall, however, one became conscious early on, in three otherwise touching pieces by Brahms, that this artist seldom explores the richness of the area below mezzo-forte. In an agenda of big-boned works by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Chopin, the lack of deep contrasts seemed remarkable.

Still, the 48-year-old American musician charmed and held a large, enthusiastic audience here festively gathered. His playing of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata had honesty and control and admirable detailing. His Rachmaninoff group--three preludes and two etudes-tableaux--delivered all of the notes and much of the lyricism in music never less than overwritten.

And his pristine--in the sense of returning to clarity and continuity and ignoring false traditions--traversal of Chopin’s B-minor Sonata gave the familiar work its dignity and nobility.

The single encore represented a miscalculation; it was an overarranged, gilding-the-painted-lily, relentlessly noodling transcription of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love,” and it seemed to go on forever.