Pianist Nojima in Royce Hall Recital

Returning to Royce Hall Friday night, the Japanese pianist Minoru Nojima, a regular visitor to our local recital halls, gave another handsome demonstration of the art that has won a large following. Why the hall was not full, one cannot guess; piano recitals at this location used to fill the auditorium.

In any case, Nojima did not disappoint. His program of works by Mozart, Schumann and Ravel showed him at his most accomplished.

What satisfied most deeply was his exquisite playing of “Miroirs,” a suite which has defeated many another pianist trying to prove his versatility. Here, Nojima excelled at mezzo-tints and emotional subtleties, yet without cheating at the loud end of the dynamic spectrum. “Noctuelles,” in particular, found that gleam of Impressionistic light which should shine through all of Ravel’s music.

Oddly enough, Nojima did far less with the ostensibly less-demanding “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales,” a work he merely played through, without finding all its colors or subtexts.

Though handsomely and sturdily performed, the pianist’s reading of Schumann’s “Symphonic Etudes” lacked the grand line and the architectonic urgency which can hold it together; Nojima seemed to concentrate on only one event at a time, while the total structure never came into view.

At the beginning of the evening, a quirky, Romanticized and overarticulated performance of Mozart’s most famous sonata, the one in C, K. 545, proved a reminder that true simplicity remains the hardest artistic commodity to achieve.