Piano for the spooky season

Storm clouds had broken, leaving the sky black velvet. The Red Sox were winning. And the moon -- glowing spooky red -- loomed large in full eclipse half an hour before Ivo Pogorelich began his recital at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Wednesday.

Weird weather. Weird night. Weird pianist. Weird concert.

Weird and amazing.

What is one to make of Pogorelich these days? What was one ever to make of Pogorelich?

He proved a sensation in 1980 when he was eliminated in the third round from the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Though too unconventional for some of the judges, the lean, mop-haired, pouty, leather-clad 22-year-old Romanian won the public, a glamorous Deutsche Grammophon record contract, and the hearts of half the teenage girls in Poland.

He was a startling pianist with a brilliant technique, a flashy metallic sound of real depth and a flamboyant way of playing Chopin that caused listeners of every stripe to swoon. He was mysterious. He married his Russian piano teacher. He seemed to both crave stardom and snub it.

As time has passed, Pogorelich has increasingly shunned the spotlight. He runs a piano competition in Germany that seeks little international attention (he held it in Pasadena in 1993). Also without a lot of fanfare, he does good work in Bosnia, where he has created a foundation to build a hospital. He puts out the occasional recording. He cancels a lot of engagements.

Onstage Wednesday, the middle-aged Pogorelich, now stocky and with a shaved head, seemed to inhabit a musical world entirely of his own making. He barely acknowledged the audience. He asked to have the theater as dark as if for a movie. He played in shadows, but there was just enough soft light on the piano to illuminate his fabulous fingers.

He began with Beethoven. The short, lyrical sonata No. 24 (Opus 78) and the final, otherworldly Sonata No. 32 (Opus 111) were played without a pause for applause. But that was hardly the strangest aspect of their performance. They were taken so slow, so incredibly and perversely slow, that one wonders whether Pogorelich might not have a different metabolism than the rest of us. Could it be that he experiences time on some other plane?

One of Beethoven’s most visionary scores, Opus 111 starts with earthly thrusts and then gradually breaks free of gravity, trilling its way to the heavens by the end of its variations movement. Pogorelich, however, began it at some distant point in outer space, far beyond the red moon, and then headed to remote galaxies.

Back on Earth for his (cursory) bow at the end, he looked the same age as when he began, thus perhaps demonstrating Einstein’s theory that people age differently in different time frames.

But everything wasn’t quite so deliberate. A playful bit in the first movement of Opus 78 was still a playful bit, standing out from its ponderous surroundings, confusing things all the more. For the most part, Pogorelich showed no expression as he played. But when his left hand sank into the lowest register, the sound he got was of such ringing power that it engulfed the hall. The high-note trills at the end of Opus 111, slowed down but clockwork even and intense, were psychedelic.

One didn’t so much listen to -- certainly not critically or analytically -- as enter into the sound. Pogorelich didn’t so much play Beethoven as cast an eerie Beethovenian spell.

After intermission came more strangeness. Rachmaninoff’s “Moments Musicaux,” Opus 16, No. 1, was so distended that it might have been mistaken for Morton Feldman and seemed to last an hour. Scriabin’s Sonata No. 2 was practically unrecognizable for several minutes.

Then, suddenly, Pogorelich returned to Earth again with three of Liszt’s “Transcendental” Etudes, played with old-fashioned virtuosity. Except that the virtuosity was, well, not quite human. Those large hands skimmed the keys in the fifth etude (“Will-o’-the-Wisp”) with a near erotic lightness and softness that would hardly disturb a cloud. No. 8 (“Wild Hunt”) was violent, demonic. And No. 10 was a phenomenal, magnificent, terrifying eruption of sound and fury.

The piano was barely standing after the encore, Balakirev’s showy “Islamey” -- just in case you missed the point that no other pianist gets a sound like that. No other pianist, that is, on this planet.