MUSIC REVIEW : Pianist Scott Displays Polish in Debut

Few pianists, veteran or aspirant, old or young, play with the polish and smoothness of Graham Scott, the debutant recitalist who appeared on the Gold Medal event at Ambassador Auditorium this week. Such naturalness and fluency is the result of uncommonly good taste, an operative, probably overworked, self-criticism and thousands of hours of practice.

The slight and slender British musician did not leave a nondescript calling card: In a program beginning with Beethoven’s Opus 109 and ending with Rachmaninoff’s notoriously difficult B-flat minor Sonata, he set himself high hurdles, then leaped them gracefully.

In between, he accomplished some heavy-duty charming in shorter, but no less exigent, works by Debussy (two preludes), Liszt (Variations on “Weinen, Klagen”) and Chopin (Barcarolle).

Through it all, he showed a technical mastery, coloristic variety and musical maturity unusual in any young pianist, but particularly so in one still months short of his 28th birthday.

An uncharacteristically large audience--for this series--greeted this impressive debut. At the end, it demanded and got two encores: Debussy’s Prelude, “General Lavine--excentric,” and the B-minor Sonata, K. 27, by Scarlatti.

What places Scott heads above many of his contemporaries is his unforced approach to music and to the piano itself.

He seems to have thought through the architectonic aspects of each piece he plays, the better to lay it out for his listeners. When he does so, he delivers peaks and valleys, ascending climaxes and myriad details, all in support of that musical perspective, and in every moment observing the stylistic niceties that separate work from work.

The bonus is that he has polished the surfaces of his performances to a shine, making them beauteous in every facet. Yet he retains spontaneity as well as control through the length of each piece. This is an extraordinary pianist, whose every musical statement resonates with grace and conviction.