MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Slobodyanik Back for Diabolical Ambassador Recital

The most threatening aspect of Slavic music, its diabolical, dark side, was made manifest in Alexander Slobodyanik’s recital at Ambassador Auditorium Thursday night.

Returning to this country after a 9-year hiatus, the pianist from Kiev, now 47 and looking thin and Norman Treigle-esque, offered works by Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, stressing the revolutionary elements in each. Clearly, the Soviet musician has not lost his touch, his technique or his probing personality. He mesmerized a large and hard-listening crowd in the Pasadena auditorium; either the coughers had stayed home, or they were intimidated into silence.

As virtuoso conductors have done before him, Slobodyanik, in playing the original keyboard version of “Pictures at an Exhibition,” makes the familiar suite not a leisurely stroll through a gallery but a haunted journey of the spirit.

The separate items glow with their specific colors--Slobodyanik remains a master of pianistic touch and nuance--but the real interest lies between them, in the Promenades, where the composer’s sudden mood-shifts, fervid imaginings and potent silences bespeak a mind in ferment.

Skillfully, Slobodyanik made all this happen, moment by moment, and in kaleidoscopic detail--seldom has this well-worn music startled the ear in so convincing a manner.

Given the Soviet pianist’s present palette--we remember him, somehow, as less intense than this--the second half of his program, comprising Scriabin’s Sixth Sonata and Prokofiev’s Seventh, separated by Shostakovich’s three early “Fantastic Dances,” followed suit.

No let-up of aggression, devilish frenzy or glowering contemplations marked these tightly paced readings, delivered with a breathless spontaneity. Slobodyanik’s well-oiled virtuosity, now in its prime, glistens as it operates. If Darth Vader were a pianist, this is how he would play.

After all this diabolism, Slobodyanik in his encores chose to manipulate his listeners in another direction. He played first Chopin’s brief Prelude in A, Opus 28, No. 7, then the same composer’s Polonaise in E-flat minor, Opus 26, No. 2. The signature tritone did not go unnoticed.

Tonight at 8 in Marsee Auditorium at the South Bay Center for the Arts, Slobodyanik plays a similar program in which he substitutes Stravinsky’s Three Movements from “Petrushka” for the Prokofiev sonata