Pianist Levinson Dazzles in Fullerton

Not quite a decade ago, 18-year-old pianist Max Levinson made an arresting impression playing a challenging recital as part of the 1990 Seal Beach Chamber Music Festival.

This reviewer spoke of his impressive technique and imaginative response to the music but remarked that it would be unreasonable to expect him to be a fully developed artist at that age.

Well, Thursday, 27-year-old Levinson returned to play on the North Orange County Community Concerts Assn. series at First United Methodist Church in Fullerton, and all caveats are off.

He has become an artist of sensitivity and judgment, of taste and interpretive maturity.

He opened the program with Beethoven’s two sonatas of Opus 27, each a “Sonata quasi una fantasia.” In the case of No. 1, this meant doing honor to the composer’s sense of exploratory form and ranging moods. In the case of No. 2, more popularly known as the “Moonlight” Sonata, this meant a probing and serious account of the familiar first movement so often butchered by beginners, and a dazzling account of the last.

Ravel’s eight “Valses nobles and sentimentales” emerged as a tapestry of elegant, dreamy, delicate and nostalgic portraits.

Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, Opus 13, provided the most overtly virtuosic playing of the program, but even here, Levinson preferred the musical values over the pyrotechnics, emphasizing the organic connections between the variations and the opening theme.

He played Schumann’s Arabesque, Opus 18, as his single encore.

The concept of community concert associations goes back to 1927. Very often, they present younger artists e on their way up. In this program, Levinson proved an excellent choice; he has the potential to become a major presence.