MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : PIANIST MARKOVA AT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT

A programmatic embarrassment of riches would have seemed to be the condition of Juliana Markova’s latest local recital Friday night in Murphy Hall at Loyola Marymount University.

But the Bulgarian pianist, who has been visiting here since 1974 (when she was 29), brought an agenda the bulk of which she had played here before. Further, she was hampered by a big-toned but unwieldy instrument in a rather small (250-seat) auditorium.

Thus, the many felicities of tone, characterful details and gradations of dynamics one might have heard--on another piano or in a larger room--never materialized on this occasion.

Markova’s musical care and technical accomplishment were displayed in a minimal way, however. Her affection for Haydn’s F-minor Variations, her thorough grasp of Schumann’s “Symphonic” Etudes, her Chopinesque approach to a selection of eight Preludes by Scriabin and her routined delivery of Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata all emerged more or less intact.