Pianist Trpceski lives up to hype in local debut

There were two big pieces of news from conductor Jeffrey Kahane and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on Saturday at Glendale’s Alex Theatre. Twenty-four-year-old Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski made his stunning Southern California debut, and the orchestra gave the premiere of Pierre Jalbert’s thorny Chamber Symphony, commissioned through its “Sound Investment” program.

One has grown wary -- and weary -- of the hype surrounding the latest young piano hotshot, but Trpceski is the real thing, an artist who plays the music, not the audience.

His vehicle was Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto, a work not exactly at the top of the list of favorite showoff concertos, but, as was quickly apparent, formidably difficult and meaty enough to warrant serious attention.

Trpceski didn’t throw his head back, seeking inspiration from high above. He didn’t rock back and forth or sway from side to side, carried away on waves of overdramatized feeling. His upper torso was surprisingly quiet. He leaned slightly into the keyboard. The action seemed to come mostly from his forearms and lyrical, spidery fingers, each of which created vertical space for the tone to expand into leisurely.

But don’t be deceived. There was plenty of power and energy, dazzling speed and intricacy of finger work and kaleidoscopic variety of color as he skimmed over the keyboard with the frictionless ease of an ice skater. In the early arpeggios of the first movement, he seemed to discover an altogether second instrument consisting of pure bell tones when the left hand crossed over into the heights of the Fazioli grand.

It may be wildly premature to say, but someday people may speak of the distinctive Trpceski touch with the same reverence they reserve for their short list of great pianists.

For an encore, he played the Prelude and Pajoushka by his compatriot Zivoin Glishic. Then with Kahane, he played the original four-hand piano version of the third dance from Dvorak’s second, Opus 72 set of Slavonic Dances.

Jalbert’s Chamber Symphony is a three-movement work lasting just under 30 minutes. Each movement, according to the composer’s program note, was inspired by a different religious figure -- St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine and Thomas Merton, respectively. While it would be ridiculous to say what any of these people should sound like in music, it was a bit surprising to hear the somberly scholastic Aquinas emerge something like a nervous, driven jazzman, or the penitent, God-praising Augustine stuck in such a repetitive rut.

Perhaps it was best just to hear the work abstractly, as a distinctively crafted work, making much of economy of means. Jalbert, the orchestra’s composer-in-residence, was on hand to receive enthusiastic applause.