MUSIC REVIEW : Vasary in Beethoven Program : The Hungarian-born pianist, last in the area in 1986, delivers a memorable mixture of poetry and fire in a hastily planned recital at Chapman University.

Six years have passed since Hungarian-born pianist Tamas Vasary last appeared in Southern California. Sunday afternoon, a small audience at Chapman University became reacquainted with his artistry.

The event had been hastily planned: When Vasary friend and Chapman faculty member Laszlo Lak heard 10 days earlier that a family illness would bring the pianist to Orange County, he persuaded Vasary to give a recital. Last-minute notices and strategically placed telephone calls constituted the scant advance publicity.

A musician of this stature deserves wide exposure and a prestigious venue after such a hiatus. But on Sunday, modest Salmon Recital Hall on the campus was the scene for a memorable mixture of poetry and fire.

During a program of four Beethoven sonatas, Vasary gave voice to a gamut of meditative musings and muscular rampages. His Apollonian side found particular expression in the slow movements of the Sonata in A, Opus 101, and the Sonata in F minor, Opus 57--the “Appassionata”--while his Dionysian virtuosity burst through the Allegro movements of those works.

This was not a note-perfect performance. Yet one had the sense that the few misses--in the opening movement of the “Appassionata” and in the closing Allegro of the Sonata in A-flat, Opus 26--came from an excess of determination, so high was the level of tension conveyed throughout these movements.

Vasary, a lanky, genial gentleman who is still youthful looking at age 58, demonstrated his willingness to risk, taking breathless tempos in the “Appassionata,” hammering out the breakneck codas in that piece, and drawing the listener into a tour-de-force fugue in Opus 101.

Possessed of seemingly endless energy, he offered five encores, again juxtaposing his deep sensitivity with his technical mastery. Among these, Schumann’s Romanze, Opus 28, No. 1, shone in a tentative, personal reading, with remarkable control of color and voicing and rapt attention to shifts in harmony. Khachaturian’s Toccata and Debussy’s “Fireworks” sparkled with exciting, taut power.