MUSIC REVIEW : PIANIST ZIMERMAN IN RECITAL AT PAVILION

When Krystian Zimerman began appearing here in 1978, he was a young, though much-awarded, pianist of 21. But his authority at the keyboard, especially as an apparently fully formed Chopin player, gave the impression of unusual maturity.

Now, six seasons and a number of visits later, our perspective on the extravagantly gifted, deeply accomplished Polish pianist starts to come into focus. After his second local recital (his first indoors), Tuesday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center, the parameters of Zimerman’s talent begin to emerge.

As displayed, rather frustratingly, in the Barcarolle in F-sharp, he remains, at 28, a Chopin specialist of ravishing tone and compelling overview. The frustration here was not in Zimerman’s interpretive revelations about the familiar piece; he produced a beauteous reading that had about it the rightness of rain and the orthodoxy of a comprehensive musicality. But this taste resulted in hunger: one immediately craved more Chopin.

As shown in Bach’s B-flat Partita--the originally announced, generous program had been pared and rearranged to include Bach but exclude Prokofiev--Zimerman is a friendly Baroque recruit whose temperament seems to chafe under the limitations of the style, but whose intentions are always honorable.

His playing of the partita tended to the pristine, yet some details--an inner crescendo here, a hesitation there--betrayed the individuality of this resourceful young virtuoso. But certain bold strokes, as, for instance, in a very aggressive second Menuet, strengthened the bond between composer and interpreter.

As confirmed in Beethoven’s rarely heard Sonata (“quasi una fantasia”) in E-flat, Opus 27, No. 1, and in Liszt’s “La Lugubre Gondola” No. 2, Zimerman is a personality who can, when so motivated, submerge himself in a style, and produce integrated, solid and unassailable performances. The sibling work to the familiar “Moonlight” Sonata poses special musical and technical problems that few have solved; Zimerman simply articulated the songfulness in the piece, related all its parts to each other, and presented to his listeners an eloquent statement.

As revealed in his unflappable resuscitation of Szymanowski’s stupendously difficult Variations on a Polish Folk Theme, Opus 10, Zimerman commands all the varieties of touches, physical stamina, speed and accuracy to make this Rachmaninovian fingerbuster seem effortlessly musical.

Finally, and by way of encore, the sandy-haired pianist, who behaves on the stage in the most unassuming manner, conquered his large and approving audience with the quiet turbulence of Mozart’s D-minor Fantasy, K. 397. Without any self-dramatizing, and within prescribed bounds of style and dynamics, Zimerman gave this enigmatic masterpiece its full voice. It was perfectly appropriate that he conclude the evening at that point.