Dance and Music Reviews : Pianist Minoru Nojima in Debussy, Liszt Program

Pianist Minoru Nojima is one of the premiere fantasists of the keyboard, and it was sheer persistence of personal vision that most marked his typically arduous, dense recital at Ambassador Auditorium Sunday afternoon.

Liszt’s B-minor Sonata is all too often the realm of the artillerist rather than the poet, eliciting unholy combinations of brutality and banality, like Conan playing “Heart and Soul.” For those who needed convincing, Nojima proved that power need not equal bombast and that introspection can flower without loads of maudlin fertilizer.

Not that Nojima’s Liszt was without the requisite sound and fury, and a full measure of fey sentiment. But he provided a persuasive context for the keyboard imperialism and the tender filigree, humanizing the great struggles and emotional gusts. Though a few notes eluded his otherwise comprehensive technical grasp, Nojima produced a remarkably controlled account, confident and consistent in its individuality.

The masterpieces of impressionism have long been Nojima turf. The pianist reaffirmed his thorough, idiosyncratic command of that field Sunday with Book II of Debussy’s Preludes.

Nojima is the consummate master of a soft, round, liquid playing that captures the living mysteries of these atmospheric miniatures. Certainly, “Feux d’artifice” exploded brilliantly, and General Lavine and Sam Pickwick swaggered with comic flair, but it was in the watery and moonstruck ambiguities of “Brouillards,” “Ondine” and “La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune” that Nojima worked the greatest wonders.

In encore, Nojima turned again to Liszt, with the crowd-pleasing, occasionally clinkered, bravura of the “La Campanella” Transcendental Etude.