Therese Brenet's Tout l'or des nuits (from an Apollinaire poem) depicts the song of the Lorelei transformed into a death rattle. The plangent sonorities were played as if bracing for battle. One of the striking qualities of Brandwynne's playing is her sound, full and rich without any sense of strain. And the colors she draws from the instrument are always suited to the meaning of the music. At the end of Milhaud's Seven-Branched Candelabra, from which she chose four pieces to open her 20th-century set, are a series of large chords which could sound nondescript. They were played with a great sonority like an organ, an instrument not associated with Judaism nor with Milhaud's music. This perfectly summed up the (understated) religious themes of the work and put its playful and tender aspects into perspective.

William Bolcom's etude Butterflies and Hummingbirds provided an impish contrast. Scherzando and madly virtuoso passages fly by with dazzling brilliance making one think of Ravel's iridescent moths in his Miroirs. Brandwynne showed all their colors off to good effect and her clearly articulated passagework belied the notoriously “live” acoustics of Old First.

Even more amazing were the Goldsworthy-like effects realized in Elinor Armer's Thaw. It went from numbness and frozen immobility to the depiction of snow melting to spring floods. The release of the tones of a chord one by one gave the impression of fingers becoming unstuck from the ice. It can be off-putting to hear many “extended keyboard” techniques in a short work for piano, but Brandwynne made this engaging work warm the heart, as well as the hands.

To conclude the first half Brandwynne offered a gorgeous rendition of Liszt's Un Sospiro. She evoked an era of the legendary pianists who really did make their audiences sigh. How wonderful it was to hear the theme shaped in the grand manner without being mannered! Coming after Milhaud and his students, Liszt's music seemed its progenitor, its connection to French music (by way of Ravel and Debussy and through the Boulez Sonatas) clear.

The 24 Preludes of Chopin making up the second half of the recital call for limitless technique coupled with an imagination to match. The variety of moods that this deep and sometimes disturbing set requires has made some great pianists (Richter among them) question whether they should be played as a set. Often lasting only half a page, they need a pianist who can read between the lines and project all kinds of elliptical thoughts and the sense that what is not there can be as important as what is.

Brandwynne proved equal to this task and more importantly, tapped the depths of their poetry. From the first contrasting-pair preludes, which contrast joy(C major) with the blackest despair (A minor), the audience was drawn into a world of feeling that would lift into radiant sunshine, only to be crashed on the rocks again. For me, the apotheosis came at the end of the great A-flat major prelude when that note tolls repeatedly in the bass while the music continues to pulse gently above. Brandwynne mixed the harmonic colors a subtly as I have ever heard. And then the doom-laden conclusion to the F minor prelude was final as anything can be. The closing three pairs of preludes were like a roller coaster and when the final low D's are repeated we reached “the very floor of Hell,” as Gide said. The effect was shattering and I found it impossible NOT to think of the preludes forming an unbreakable cycle.

Like the essence of flowers, the first movement of Mozart's Sonata in E-flat as the encore proved the perfect rescue-remedy and a tribute to Brandwynne's artistry and sincerity.