Pianist Eduardus Halim plays powerfully, with mixed results

Milwaukee Journal, The, Mar 30, 1995 by TOM STRINI

Journal music critic

Pianist Eduardus Halim left no doubt that he was after sounds and interpretations both bigger than life and intensely personal at a recital at Mount Mary College Wednesday evening.

But what did he achieve? Heroic pianism in the grand manner of his mentor, Vladimir Horowitz? Or eccentric, self- indulgent exaggeration?

To some extent, the answer is in the ear of the beholder. Most of the 300 in attendance stood and applauded enthusiastically at the end of the concert. I heard mixed results and had mixed feelings.

Halim's extremes of dynamics and tempo best fit a group of Scriabin pieces. Two "Poemes," a pair of Etudes, and the bizarre Sonata No. 9 ("Black Mass") are more about extravagant, free- floating gestures and blocks of pianistic color than about theme, development or form. Halim's lightning-bolt energy and apparent spontaneity lit up Scriabin's non sequiturs.

Liszt's rhapsodic "Apparitions" Nos. 1 and 2 also fared well in Halim's hands. But his style got in the way of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12, Schumann's Fantasy Opus 17, Schubert's Impromptu Opus 90 No. 3 and, especially, Beethoven's "32 Variations on an Original Theme."

Halim produces volume aplenty, but he can't produce weight, that subtle and elusive combination of timing and touch that gives the phrase a center of gravity. He often disrupts his line with awkward accents, and tends to bone-clanking tone when emphatic (which is most of the time).

His cavalier treatment of rhythm can be a thrill, but it can be a problem, too. His woozy tempos stripped the Liszt Rhapsody of its strong dance rhythms. The mathematical divisions of the beat across Beethoven's Variations were lost amid Halim's metric bending and stretching and smeared articulation. It's miserly to listen for wrong notes and worse to carp about them, but Halim played too many of them, sometimes because he let the tempo get away from him.

Horowitz Halim is not, but he can't be blamed for that. He might, however, be blamed for trying too hard to be Horowitz.