Tonight I had the pleasure of making my first acquaintance with pianist George Li, courtesy the Toronto Summer Music Festival, in an excellent concert at Koerner Hall.

The four big works on the program plus the pair of encores all showed us the stunning technique of a young pianist (coming up on his 30th birthday next month), but always employed towards a display of excellent taste.

Perhaps the programmer (possibly the pianist himself) aimed at suggesting something pictorial, given the pair of Beethoven sonatas with epithet names before intermission, followed by Debussy’s first set of Images and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Yes we saw pictures, the imagination stirred by the way the pieces were played.

We began with the Op 31 #2 that’s associated with Shakespeare’s play The Tempest thanks to comments the composer made to his friend Anton Schindler. The only connection I see to the play is that both the first and last movements remind me of stormy weather and waves: but it’s great for the piece to have the suggestive name. In Li’s reading the first movement offers something melodramatic, his use of the pedal boldly modern underlining some of the unexpected dissonances. In the slow second movement Li is understated, the deep passion in the melody clearly articulated but soft & gentle. For the third he is exquisite, so delicate in his touch and lighter than what I’m accustomed to, a reading smooth & subtle.

That delicate touch was featured in everything we heard tonight. Li’s next offering was the Op 27 #2 aka the Moonlight Sonata. The second movement was another example of understatement, setting up a last movement that was super quick without the percussive moments one sometimes gets. I think it helped the piece build to the explosive cadenzas at the end which felt more climactic because of Li’s restraint earlier in the sonata.

While I loved the first movement I was stunned by one of the longest examples of phone noise I’ve ever encountered and at surely the most inappropriate moment possible. That Li didn’t seem to respond to the provocation was to his credit (I half expected him to stop and start over), while my jaw was practically dislocated in shock, as the sound went on and on.

After intermission we went in a different direction, first with the Debussy Images series 1. I was in heaven for the Reflets dans l’eau, mostly soft and appropriately fluid, the music dripping from Li’s fingers. We then had a suitably solemn Hommage a Rameau, and a madcap playful Mouvement to bring this part of the concert to its conclusion. I may be wrong but I believe this 3rd of the Images is the most technically demanding part of the concert: that Li tossed off as though it were a lark or a race around the park. If my jaw was down, this time it was in awe of the pianist’s technical prowess.

Then came Pictures at an Exhibition, a piece we usually hear with orchestration (usually by Ravel), even if in my opinion it’s far more interesting in the original for piano. When I spoke in the headline of technique in the service of good taste I was thinking about the whole concert, but it was particularly true for the Mussorgsky, technical wizardry at its most cinematic. The cute unhatched chicks have never been so balletic, the marketplace at Limoges wildly frenetic, the Hut on Fowl’s Legs demonic. In the slower passages, we heard melodies that sang soulfully, as in the old castle. The climactic Great Gate of Kyiv (is this the first time I call it that? educated alas by ongoing news reports of the invasion & endless bombardments) had the most wonderful sense of scale, between the suggestion of pious choruses and bells.

After lots of applause Li honoured us with a pair of encores. First it was a peaceful shift away from the wild energies of Mussorgsky with Chopin’s raindrop prelude in D-flat Op. 28, #15, offered in a sweet meditation. Li then gave us fireworks with Liszt’s la Campanella etude, this time holding nothing back.

As I left I took a picture of the statue of Franz Liszt, who surely would have been pleased at how his music was being interpreted.

It was another great TSM concert. I hope to hear Li again sometime.