An Appealing If Not Quite Handsome Adonis

Hauled out periodically as a quaint artifact of musical times past, melodrama, a blending of poetic declamation accompanied by music, is an intriguing throwback to the eras before film and television.

Pianist-composer Mark Robson brought his own work in the genre, “Initiation,” to Piano Spheres at his seasonal appearance on the series, Tuesday at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena.

It is an hourlong melange of poetry by, among others, Shelley, Theocritus, Ovid, Whitman and Robson himself, concerning the life of Adonis. Performed by the composer at the piano, with reader-percussionist Lynda Sue Marks-Guarnieri, it proved regularly entertaining, if not compelling.

Robson’s eclectic compositional style did not hold things together. The narrative did not grip; the Greek texts baffled rather than illuminated. Theatricality and a visual urgency can save such a work, and efforts in that direction--the lighting of candles, the giving of single flowers to audience members--helped. But a lot of pauses kept the meshed poetries earthbound. And no sense of inevitability colored the total.

Nonetheless, the accomplished Robson and Marks-Guarnieri gave the work an assured and smooth unveiling.

Alone in the first half of the evening, pianist Robson again revealed virtuosic skills in emotionally resonant performances of pieces by Mauricio Kagel, Olivier Messiaen and Frederic Rzewski, investing in each the affection, sound-variety and musical commitment for which the Piano Spheres series is now so admired.