MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Radu Lupu: The Introvert as Showman

Radu Lupu, now 46, isn’t like most of the other celebrated pianists of his generation.

He doesn’t specialize in flash and thunder. For all his technical skill, he doesn’t prize bravura flourishes in place of introspection, doesn’t invest in sound at the expense of substance. He certainly doesn’t make a mighty noise at the keyboard. Call him a pianissimist , if you must.

Listen to the sensitivity with which he unlocks the intimate secrets of Schubert and Schumann. Savor the purity of his Mozart and Beethoven. Marvel at his rhapsodic daring when it comes to stretching a beat or distorting a rhythm. Leave the heaving and the pounding to his colleagues.

Lupu enjoys the reputation of a lyrical poet. Or so we thought.

His recital at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Monday suggested that he actually may not enjoy that reputation after all. On this provocative occasion, the Romanian virtuoso tried to play the ancient if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em game.

He played Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

This is a major challenge for a whiz-bang pianist. It demands extraordinary strength and stamina. It splashes primitive character and color on a vast dynamic scale. Often it forces the piano to impersonate a whole orchestra.

It doesn’t require much introspection. No matter. Lupu played it his own supple, subtle way.

He seized every opportunity for refined understatement, and even found a few that might have surprised the composer. In Lupu’s fleet hands, the rumbling sadness of the “Vecchio Castello” took on tragic shadows. The pranks of the “Tuileries” became ethereal flights of fancy. The chicks danced in their shells with exquisite delicacy.

In passages associated with bombast or grotesquerie, Lupu maintained his reserve. The “Gnomus” monster twitched gently. The “Bydlo” ox lumbered with tender dignity. The Polish Jews bickered rather politely. The “Great Gate of Kiev” didn’t seem all that great in this context.

One had to admire Lupu’s imagination, even when it served a dubious purpose. This may not have been a wholly idiomatic performance, but, even in its apparent miscalculations, it was an illuminating one.

The remainder of the program found the pianist illuminating more characteristic repertory.

An imperious bear of a man, eminently serious if not dour in manner, he began the evening with searching attention to the romantic severities of Brahms’ D-minor Theme and Variations (extracted from the Sextet, Opus 18) and the youthful indulgences of his Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp. The pianist apparently followed the example of the composer, incidentally, by eschewing the usual bench in favor of a strong-backed no-nonsense chair.

As a prelude to the massive Mussorgsky showpiece, he played three miniatures from Tchaikovsky’s “Seasons,” Opus 37a, with nostalgic charm and impeccable poise. Responding to the rapturous ovation that follows any performance of “Pictures at an Exhibition,” he offered two appropriately subdued encores: the slow movement of Schubert’s A-major Sonata, D. 664, and Brahms’ A-major Intermezzo, Opus 118.