MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Radiates Assurance

Jeffrey Biegel is a pianist who clearly knows what he is about. The 31-year-old American possesses a big, brawny technique and the confidence of a gold-medal athlete.

And in his local debut Sunday afternoon at Sherwood Auditorium, he showed not the slightest reluctance to play to the gallery with breathless tempos and keyboard-pounding brilliance that sometimes verged on raucous clatter.

For this inaugural recital on the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s Discovery Series, which is devoted to younger performers who participate in the society’s educational outreach program, Biegel offered an appealing, substantial program. (Although children were admitted to the recital gratis, adults easily outnumbered them.)

Though he opened with Chopin’s ingratiating G Minor Ballade, Op. 23, and closed with Mily Balakirev’s splashy toccata “Islamey,” the heart of his program was a pair of sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart.

In Biegel’s hands, Beethoven’s F Minor “Appassionata” Sonata seemed to be of two minds. He kept the dynamics of the opening movements unusually restrained, clouded in a kind of mystical haze, but the finale took off with the untrammeled fury of a runaway stallion. He aimed for bravura effect in the finale, but such heavy-handed overplaying muddied the texture and made his otherwise mellow sonority strident.

Fortunately, Mozart’s C Minor Sonata, K. 457, emerged with both clarity and coherence. The young pianist’s decisive articulation and keen sense of the work’s dramatic underpinnings elegantly revealed the sonata’s exquisite architecture. And he imbued the major mode Andante with a profound serenity.

Biegel’s programmatic bonbons included a thoughtfully introspective interpretation of Brahms’ E Major Intermezzo, Op. 116, No. 4, and a wonderfully atmospheric performance of Anton Rubinstein’s “Kammenoi-Ostrow,” made buoyant by Biegel’s lavish, feathery legato.

In “Islamey,” the keyboard wizard seemed to have technique to spare and gleefully dispatched its chordal fury with total aplomb.

He indulged his audience two encores, Cesar Cui’s rarely heard E Minor Prelude, which sounded like a gossamer Scriabin mood piece, and a decadently ornamented version of Strauss’ “Blue Danube” Waltz.