Paik Reveals Sensitivity in Impressive West Coast Debut

Piano competitions being what they are these days, you never know quite what to expect when a winner shows up for a concert, even one with the credentials of HaeSun Paik: gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively, in the competitions named for William Kapell, Queen Elisabeth (of Belgium) and Tchaikovsky.

The program for her West Coast debut Thursday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre suggested that she had major chops--works by Ravel, Rachmaninoff and Liszt jerked the difficulty meter into the red zone--but would she just hammer away, automaton-like?

The answer was, happily, a resounding no. Paik demonstrated from the get-go that she was a sensitive and thinking musician (a disciple of piano guru Russell Sherman) first and an awesome technician second.

Most thrilling was her traversal of Ravel’s “La Valse,” its fogs and swirls rendered intricately rather than nebulously, its many rhythmic complications produced with finessed feints and dodges. As the closing pages expanded, intensified and took off, she revealed the work as “The Rite of Spring” of waltzes.

The over-the-top, circus-act virtuosity of Liszt’s “Reminiscences de Don Juan” (based on Mozart, sort of) is laughable--the “Champagne” Aria crashes through in octaves--but by the time Paik was through her high-octane, ultra-clean performance, one had to admit it was pretty fun.

Rachmaninoff’s “Corelli” Variations unwound as a narrative arc rather than in sections, and the clarity of Paik’s textures (no over-pedaling) and the crispness of her inflection avoided potential murk and bombast. During quick rests her hands froze in midair, the resulting nanosecond of silence between thunders was as complete as if someone had lifted the needle from a record.

Haydn’s Andante with Variations in F minor, Liszt’s “Au Bord d’une Source” and “Consolation” No. 3 showed her in quiet music as poetic in phrasing, exquisite and varied in touch, skilled in terraced dynamics, but never losing the line. Her encores were Tchaikovsky’s “October” and Chopin’s Etude, Opus 25, No. 10.