Reviews

FORT WORTH – Pianist Ingrid Fliter gave an eloquent performance in February of the Chopin F minor Piano Concerto, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. So interest was certainly piqued for her solo recital Tuesday evening at the Kimbell Art Museum, in the Cliburn Concerts series.

The Buenos Aires-born pianist sprang to international attention in 2006 as winner of the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. Inaugurated in 1991, the quadrennial prize is awarded by a committee that goes around in secret to hear public concerts.

Unlike too many other performers in the Kimbell series, Ms. Fliter didn't overplay in the museum's relatively cozy upstairs lobby. She drew sounds at once clear and warm-centered from a Hamburg Steinway that in other hands has sometimes been a bit brassy.

At age 34, Ms. Fliter is no beginner. But her Fort Worth performances suggested a work in progress.

Best of the offerings was the Chopin B minor Sonata (No. 3), executed with admirable skill and, apart from a directionless slow movement, artful shape. But the music's magic eluded. An Alberto Ginastera Argentinian Dance, all manic boogie-woogie, made a rousing encore.

Other performances were more uneven, suggesting uncertain feeling for form, even for harmonic rhythm. The first movement of Beethoven's Op. 109 Sonata was effectively constructed, but the three that followed were strangely incoherent.

In the Schubert C minor Impromptu (D. 899, No. 1), Ms. Fliter kept tugging at phrases before they could reach their climactic points, although the E-flat major Impromptu (No.2) flowed more naturally. Two Chopin waltzes, played as encores, were disfigured by crude rushes and lurches. A Chopin B major Nocturne (Op. 9, No. 2) started nicely enough, but lunges and hushes in the faster B section were overdone.

Further distraction was supplied by two people nearby fingering their glowing-screened electronic devices, one also with a nice blinking green light. Please, people, that's rude.