Music Reviews : Rodriguez Plays 20th-Century Items

Just like presidential candidates, some pianists have a consistently canny instinct for how best to get their messages across--and some do not. Count Santiago Rodriguez among the latter.

When the Cuban-born musician played a recital Thursday night at the South Bay Center for the Arts at El Camino College, for instance, he showed once again that he commands a powerful arsenal of technique, the heart of a poet, the mind of a philosopher and no small degree of musicianship.

But the program he chose--music by three 20th-Century composers, who, despite their different nationalities, stand on similarly limited turf--did not deliver those virtues with maximum impact.

For one thing, the agenda was too specialized. The first half consisted of Rachmaninoff--nine preludes, followed by the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. One listener, at least, found the pileup diffuse and the definitions beginning to blur, well before the first hour ended.

The start was impressive, however. Opening with the C-minor Prelude, Rodriguez managed an artistic feat: He turned this solo reference to the Second Concerto into a novella, one with a discernible beginning, middle and end. And in the Sonata his virtuosity dazzled without ever suggesting empty bombast--a myriad of subtleties revealed themselves throughout the reposeful Andante, while the brilliant splash and thunderous explosion of the outer movements were truly gripping.

But what came after intermission seemed, as one wag put it, nothing but encores.

While Ginastera’s Three Argentine Dances lacked nothing in pianistic interest joining them to Lecuona’s “Andalucia” Suite, with its Ed Sullivan Show sort of populism, did not further his cause any more than the single encore, a lullaby by Joaquin Ruvo.