Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter burst into the international musical consciousness in 2006, with her receipt of the influential Gilmore Artist Award. In the years since, she has lived up to the resulting hype, solidifying her place as one of the major keyboard artists of our time.
Catching her at this ideal moment in her career, the Friends of Chamber Music engaged Fliter for her first Denver recital Wednesday evening in Gates Concert Hall. It proved to be a concert to remember.
Appearing as though she can hardly contain her eagerness as she sits at the keyboard, she marries amazing technical brilliance with uncommon depth and expressiveness and infuses everything she plays with an irrepressible musical joy.
The first of the evening’s many “wow moments” came during J.S. Bach’s Italian Concerto in F major, BWV 971, with Fliter’s spellbinding, gently elegant take on the slow second movement, as she transported listeners to some transcendent realm. She concluded the piece with a zippy, exhilarating romp through the final movement, fully embracing its “Presto” tempo marking.
The pianist has an unmistakable connection to Frederic Chopin, as she persuasively demonstrated with suave, captivating performances of six of the composer’s waltzes.
While bringing due substance to these works, she infused them with a sense of fun and just the right dash of showmanship. With an appealingly fluid, free sense of phrasing, she conveyed the unique flavor of each while never losing sight of their overriding waltz rhythm and spirit.
With the kind of confidence she showed all evening, she threw herself into the Grande Valse Brillante in A-flat Major, Op. 34, No. 1, offering a big, crowd-pleasing performance.
Listeners could easily have gone home content after the first half alone, but the most ambitious part of the night was yet to come — a complete, nearly 40-minute performance of Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13.
This big, challenging work allowed Fliter to show the full sweep of her artistry. She delivered a complex, encompassing interpretation that captured the orchestral scope of the whole and gave voice to each of its distinctive, self-contained sections.
Here’s hoping the Friends are already working on an encore appearance.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
