Kodama Reins In Beethoven, Then Lets Him Loose

In an ideal world, the best way to experience all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas would be to hear them in numerical order over a few days or weeks, following Beethoven’s forward evolution and switchbacks, letting their cumulative impact build and wash over you.

But live Beethoven sonata cycles in the real world often don’t work that way. Pianists have to deal with their busy schedules, hall availability, planning balanced programs, and other factors. Thus, pianist Mari Kodama’s Beethoven cycle for Southwest Chamber Music, begun last season, is continuing to unfold in nonconsecutive order. The first of two installments this season had its initial performance Tuesday night at the Colburn School’s Zipper Concert Hall.

As a feat of self-contained programming, this lineup looked fascinating on paper. Opening with a brief transition work to Beethoven’s late period, the Sonata No. 27, Kodama flashed back to the Opus 14 classical twins, the Sonatas Nos. 9 and 10 (in reverse order), and then brought us face-to-face with the gigantic, gnarled, late-period landmark, the Sonata No. 29 (“Hammerklavier”).

But rather than bring out the differences in these pieces, the unflappable Kodama seemed to unify them--or smooth them away, depending upon your viewpoint--under one, mostly homogenous approach. She produced a relaxed, sometimes blurred yet always singing tone from her Steinway, minimizing shifts in tempos, compressing and even changing a few dynamic markings. The last point was crucial, for some of Beethoven’s fury, emotional power and surly eccentricities are lost when dynamic contrasts are reined in.

Yet Beethoven could not be kept in check completely: The mad, wildly trilling fugue in the “Hammerklavier” finale--which is 20th century music despite its 19th century origin--finally triggered something in Kodama. From this point, she was able to build heatedly and cumulatively to a shattering climax and an impressive coda, with all of her abundant technique now channeled into characterizing each passage. There were no encores; nothing could rightly follow that.

* Mari Kodama repeats this program Saturday, 8 p.m., Norton Simon Museum Theater, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. $10-$25. Her second set of sonatas during this season will be performed Dec. 12 and 16. (800) 726-7147.