According to Chopin’s friends and students-turned-biographers, the Polish virtuoso detested performing in large concert halls. But once he had suffered through enough public concerts to establish himself, he was pleased to play regularly for his friends and patrons in the comfortable, intimate surroundings of Parisian salons.

Sunday (February 7) at the La Jolla Athenaeum, San Diego’s closest accessible approximation of the salons of the Fourth Arrondissement, the young Israeli pianist Victor Stanislavsky played a sparkling, expansive all-Chopin recital. The intimacy of the venue—there is no stage and the room holds some 100 souls on smallish chairs—proved ideal for Stanislavsky’s supple, polished, and eloquent technique. His Chopin was intimate, but never precious; rhapsodic, but never exuberant at the expense of clarity.

Pianist Victor Stanislavsky.

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Now that we are in the second month of the Chopin bicentennial year, San Diegans are anticipating a flood of all-Chopin recitals. Last month Garrick Ohlsson launched the La Jolla Music Society’s two-year project to present every work that the composer wrote. Now if only the various upcoming Chopin programs match the fresh vitality of Stanislavsky’s approach, we will indeed have a bountiful season.

For his Athenaeum program, Stanislavsky chose later works of Chopin, opening with the probing, spiritual “Polonaise-Fantasie,” Op. 61, and closing with the “B Minor Sonata,” Op. 58, perhaps to underline that this 27-year-old performer has a mature grasp of the repertory. Whatever his motivations for the programming, his interpretive maturity came through conclusively.

For some recitalists, it is enough to master the formidable technical challenges of Chopin and simply glory in that achievement. What sets Stansilavsky apart is his consistent subjugation of technical flourish to cultivate the composer’s kaleidoscopic melodic invention against unexpected shifting harmonic colors and subtle transformation of textures, cardinal traits of Chopin’s improvisatory genius. In the “Polonaise-Fantasy” and the first movement of the Sonata, Stanislavsky captured the improvisatory character of these movements with winning confidence.

I was impressed with his soulful creation of the Sonata’s slow movement, which many consider to be Chopin’s great homage to the operatic style of his idol, Vincenzo Bellini. Even at the slowest tempos, Stanislavsky kept these sinuous melodies vital and compelling, sustaining the inner drama against outer repose.

He imbued the “Scherzo No. 4 in E Major,” Op. 54, with a Schubertian playfulness, and his meticulous articulation of the “Three Waltzes,” Op. 34 displayed the aristocratic animation that Chopin employed to keep his wealthy patrons satisfied. Although the “Polonaise D Minor,” Op. 71, has a high opus number, it was actually composed before Chopin left Poland for Paris and published posthumously. Stanislavsky gave it a depth that raised it to the level of the more sophisticated compositions of the rest of his program.

Stanislavsky should go far in a solo career, although in larger halls, he may have to indulge in some muscular displays of sheer technique to woo the denizens of the upper balconies. But his aesthetic choices in the confines of the Athenaeum were golden.

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