With the last of his Chopin encores, the brilliant Waltz in E Minor (Op. posth.), the youthful Ning An concluded an athletic and intellectually appealing recital at the McAfee Center, Saratoga, May 20, the last concert of the Steinway Society the Bay Area 2009-2010 season.

Almost as a foil to the second half dominance of Frederic Chopin, the recital opened with Beethoven’s witty Sonata No. 18 in in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3 (1802), a favorite of such luminaries as Clara Haskil and Artur Rubinstein. An’s bright coloration and deft articulation of the light and gracious figures often appeared as a comic anticipation of the more explosive Appassionata gestures in the self-same four beats. This sonata, too, exults in sudden sforzati and ringing leaps of register, but carried out with a poised aplomb by the young pianist in a most soberly persuasive fashion. The right hand cadenzas enjoyed a smooth, crisp line.

Verve and clarity marked the 2/4 Scherzo as well, the staccati and non legato phrases in plastic, kaleidoscopic motion. Having no slow movement as such, the Menuetto luxuriated in full chords, thus offering us perhaps the most arioso and “serious” of the four movements. The last movement An took as a moto perpetuo, the eighth notes constantly moving with light luster, the bright colors a la bravura and richly hued all the more by An’s fierce clarity of phrase.

An then turned to the Romantic indulgence of Serge Rachmaninov’s 1931 Variations on a Theme of Corelli, with its immediate homage to Corelli’s La Folia d’Espagne and Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody. That the original twelve-bar D Minor tune has folk derivations proves relatively moot in Rachmaninov’s learned treatment, which exploits any number of virtuoso possibilities in the course of a tripartite, twenty-variation structure that loosely resembles a concerto or Franck’s Symphonic Variations. Ning An projected a rigorous poise throughout this tortuous work, gobbling up its titanic spans and double octaves as any hungry piranha devours goldfish. We could well relish the multifarious musical allusions in the piece--to the Bach Chaconne in D Minor, to Liszt’s treatment of the piece as ecstatic etude or sublime nocturne--each subsumed to the idea of an harmonic labyrinth that accommodated Corelli’s famed bariolage technique in the violin to the keyboard idiom.

That Ning An holds Chopin dear became apparent from the outset of the second half, which An changed from his original program indications. He gave us the first two of the Op. 9 Nocturnes (1832-1833), dedicated to Madame Pleyel. The lovely 6/4 B-flat Minor Nocturne opened briskly but saturated with Romantic melancholy, the left hand a series unbroken motion that often intimated thought shared by Schumann. The transition to the middle section, rife with D-flat Major, proceeded seamlessly, nostalgic and poetic at once. Of course, the E-flat Nocturne almost plays itself, and its limpid poetry benefited by An’s simple exposition of each of repetitions of the melodic line, whose 12/8 character serves as an idiosyncratic waltz stored in the haunts of the poet’s mind. An then addressed three of the four mazurkas of 1837, Op. 30--nos. 1 (C Minor), 2 (B Minor) and 4 (C-sharp Minor)--stating quite openly that he cares not for No. 3. A product of Chopin’s romantic dalliance with Maria Wodzinski, they move in sleek agogic mercury, especially the B Minor. The melodic line and the accented second beat might hint at detachment rather than passion, like a withered flower signifying tender but defunct memories. The first and fourth retain a rustic character, and even more than passing aspects of the Scarlatti keyboard tradition.

The rarity among these “cannons hidden in flowers” was the Introduction and Rondo in E-flat Major, Op. 16 (1833), a piece that has only recently become popular via the recordings of Vladimir Horowitz and Frederic Chiu. A Parisian bravura salon piece, the work is dedicated to Caroline Hartmann, opening in C Minor and then moving to the rather bold agogics of the main theme in E-flat Major. The top line exploited all sorts of filigree and fioritura requisite to a young Paris firebrand of the keyboard. In the dynamic course of its brilliant runs, we could hear allusions to the E Minor Concerto whose slick virtuosity in Polish rhythm needs no apology.

An’s big work was the Second Scherzo in B-flat Minor, Op. 31 (1837), a structure whose magnificence has often been likened to a Byronic poem or to the very instantiation of Romantic Agony. Ning An held his rapt audience in thrall through every permutation of this music’s tomb-like question-and-answer dialogue, whose middle section boils with a medley of conflicting emotions beset by trills and arrogant declamations of contempt or despair. No small wonder, then, that An’s encore of the C-sharp Minor Nocturne (Op. posth.), that evocation of Poland and the Concerto in F Minor, reminded us both of the film The Pianist and all the haunted melancholy this master of the modern keyboard can muster when the Muse is upon him.

A splendid show all the way, artfully rendered and much appreciated.