Beethoven Journey Begins for Kodama

Being the athletes they are, pianists are not immune to the temptation of meeting challenges simply because they’re there. The more restless take on the Herculean tasks of performing in concert all the keyboard music of Bach or Chopin (or Bach and Chopin); at least once a single pianist has played, nonstop, Satie’s 18-hour “Vexations.” This month, with the release of the 94th CD, Leslie Howard entered the record books for the unimaginable accomplishment of recording all of Liszt’s piano music.

But for most mortal pianists, the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven is Everest enough, and although that particular mountain of music has been scaled often, every attempt is noteworthy. It may not be technically the most demanding music ever written, but the physical demands are plenty tough, and the interpretive challenges, ranging from Beethoven’s earthy humor to his incomparable moments of visionary wonder, are all but limitless. Tuesday night at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, Mari Kodama, a young Japanese pianist living in San Francisco, began the great adventure.

Kodama, who will play the sonatas over three seasons on the Southwest Chamber Music series, was trained in France, and French is her style. She has an elegant touch, an admirable sense of clarity and a rhythmic scrupulousness. She thinks in keyboard colors and has a rainbow of tints at her disposal. There is a feline grace to her phrasing. Also feline is the way she will pounce on a percussive passage--suddenly, boldly, precisely, as if for the kill--and from that comes her most dramatic playing.

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Stylistically this makes her an unusual Beethovenian. During her performances, I tried to picture Beethoven and couldn’t quite conjure up either the irrepressible young rebel dazzling the court with his amazing virtuosity or the irascible and unkempt old man banging his fortepianos to pieces as he tore apart all known notions of what a sonata should be. But I could easily imagine Ravel sitting down at the piano and playing Beethoven just Kodama’s way.

The program was carefully divided. The three Opus 10 sonatas (the fifth, sixth and seventh Beethoven wrote) are the works of a young composer exploding the classical ideal. The first two are playful, imaginative, boisterous. The third, in D, is a major statement, with Beethoven’s first great slow movement and a particularly rowdy finale.

Kodama in all these was more impressionistic than bold or theatrical, let alone boisterous. The opening of Opus 10, No. 2 was, for instance, almost shimmeringly fast and lustrous; her tone in the slow movement of Opus 10, No. 3 was rich and gorgeous.

The later sonatas, after intermission--No. 24 in F-sharp major, Opus 78, and No. 26 in E-flat major, Opus 81a (“Les Adieux”)--suited her better. These, and particularly “Les Adieux,” were made to sound like a surprising succession of lush pianistic textures and enchanting sound worlds. Yet this was not a succession without purpose--Kodama connects phrases almost to fault in very long lines.

The reverberant church acoustic flattered her in the most lyrical utterances when single notes of a long melody hung marvelously in the air but muddied thick, fast passages (to which a bit of first-night nerves may have also contributed). The more conventional Zipper Auditorium at the Colburn School, where the program repeats tonight, is likely to suit her better overall. But Pasadena Presbyterian has one great advantage as a venue. It is in a neighborhood--with used-book shops, an old independent record store with a genuine personality, unpretentious small restaurants and coffeehouses--that suits Beethoven.

* Mari Kodama repeats Tuesday’s program tonight at 8, Colburn School, 200 S. Grand Ave. The second set of sonatas will be performed Dec. 14, 8 p.m., at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, and Dec. 16, 8 p.m., at the Colburn School. $10-$20. (800) 726-7147.