MUSIC REVIEW : STERN, BRONFMAN TEAM IN RECITAL

They seem an unlikely duo: Isaac Stern, the beloved, violin-playing, pear-shaped mensch who saved Carnegie Hall, and Yefim Bronfman, the tall, self-effacing, Clark Kent-style virtuoso pianist who plays it cool. When Bronfman was born in 1958, Stern was already world-famous, justly celebrated, and nearly 38 years old. An odd coupling.

Yet, the American fiddler and the Israeli pianist share at least one common tie: They were both born in the Soviet Union. Beyond that, as they proved in a joint recital Saturday night in Segerstrom Hall at the new Orange County Performing Arts Center, Stern and Bronfman are conspicuously dedicated to the arts of ensemble, communication and music-making.

Before a large, if late-arriving, audience, they offered, together, sonatas by Schubert, Brahms and Saint-Saens on a dimly lit stage. After intermission, still midst this gloom, Bronfman by himself played Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata.

As a recital hall, Segerstrom has already been tested, by none other than Leontyne Price, and found non-intimate but serviceable. Sampled from two locations on Saturday, the 2-week-old auditorium showed handsome acoustical character--reassuring resonance and undistorted brilliance--in the first tier (the balcony closest to the stage), utilitarian sound projection in the orchestra section (downstairs).

The bottom line? The playing of both the 66-year old violinist and the 28-year old pianist was enhanced and flattered by the room; balances became whatever the two musicians chose them to be; felicities of expression and articulation seemed to carry well to all parts of the hall.

Moreover, Stern and Bronfman, who operate as a pair of warm-hearted, mutually respectful musical friends, appeared in good form.

They brought the long view to Schubert’s deceptively fragile A-major Sonata, detailing its vulnerability in arching lines of lyricism. They delivered the guts and passion of Brahms’ D-minor Sonata without clobbering it in overplaying. And they let loose the bubbles in Saint-Saens’ effervescent First Sonata, riding it to glory in a controlled, climactically ascending finale.

Actually, Bronfman had achieved the same kind of heat and climax in a colorful, unflagging reading of the Prokofiev Sonata, but so offhandedly--he seldom calls attention to himself, or appears to be mesmerized by his own skills--and in such dim light, that the thrills, though present, were diminished. An old backstage philosopher used to say, “Lighting is everything”; now we know what he meant.