Music Reviews : Youthful Cellist at UCLA’s Royce Hall

The 22-year-old cellist Allison Eldredge delighted a small audience Saturday night with a program of sonatas by Beethoven, Shostakovich and Cesar Franck. Accompanied by pianist Yoshie Akimoto, Eldredge showed a sweet tone on the A string and occasional flashes of temperament. But, although she looked the part of an important young artist, tossing her head impulsively and emitting soulful glances, these did not compensate for a small sound and incomplete musical understanding.

Opening her Royce Hall recital with a Bach arrangement offered as a prayer to her ailing grandmother, Eldredge indicated, with her quick vibrato and fine range of colors an attractive artist. But she played Beethoven’s Sonata, Opus 102, No. 2, with generic cellistic gloss and pathos instead of genuine musical insight. She distorted the themes of the first movement to fit a Romantic paradigm. She missed the point of the stark/sweet contrasts in the slow movement. And, in the fugue of the finale, she and Akimoto (her mother) lacked the physical and intellectual strength to sort out its complex strands.

Eldredge fared better with Shostakovich’s Sonata, Opus 40, particularly in the two fast movements. Unfortunately, she rarely took the time to characterize convincingly the myriad moods with which the piece abounds, and her small sound seriously diminished the emotional impact of the slow movement.

After intermission, Eldredge gave the cello version of Franck’s tired A-major Violin Sonata an undistinguished run-through, then played two encores.