Piotr Anderszewski (piano)

Two Mazurkas - Szymanowski

Sonata in C minor, Op 111 - Beethoven

Masques, Op 34 - Szymanowski

French Suite No 5 - Bach

The Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski has been a regular visitor to Ireland since his debut here in 1991. I don't think, however, that any of his previous appearances here gave quite as thorough an impression of his pianistic gifts as his programme for the Limerick Music Association at the National Concert Hall last Thursday.

The single most remarkable feature of this recital was the exceptional allure of his soft playing. Some pianists like to surprise by unveiling a new level of loudness, when they've already created the impression they've gone as far as they can go. Anderszewski does exactly the opposite. When you think he's playing with a delicacy and hush that couldn't be controlled if he played any quieter, he'll find the concentration and the discipline to lower his level and still retain a fluid cogency and a fine sense of shape.

That, of course, is by no means the whole story. But it's actually what sticks in the mind most strongly, more than a lot of the music itself. Perhaps this is because there's something about the playing which suggests Anderszewski is a miniaturist, and one who can choose to see even a miniature as a series of localised gestures, themselves inviting a further application of miniaturisation.

The golden moments approach worked beautifully in the opening two Mazurkas by his fellow-countryman, Szy manowski - highly-coloured, tangy, eventful. There was something slightly disorienting about Beethoven's last great sonata, Op. 111, and Bach's Fifth French Suite. The shock came in finding such impeccable pianism used in a way that so consistently reduced the tension of so much vital contrapuntal writing. It's not that he didn't succeed in layering the part-writing, but that he allowed the lines, as it were, to rub off each other without any sparks or heat.

Szymanowski's Masques are exotically-perfumed creations, and the dreamy fantasist in Anderszewski relished their florid, Scriabinesque curlicues. They come to sound over-extended, though, when, perfectionist pianism or no, the formal articulative value of rhythm is sacrificed in the pursuit of colouristic magic.