{TABLE} Fantasies Op 116 .................. Brahms Sonata in A flat Op 110 ........... Beethoven Piano Pieces Op 119 ............... Brahms Sonata in C minor Op 111 .......... Beethoven {/TABLE} RADU Lupu's piano recital at the National Concert Hall on Sunday night showed consummate artistry. The programme, presented as part of the NCH/The Irish Times Celebrity Concert Series, was top flight - Brahms's Fantasies Op. 116 and Piano Pieces Op. 119, and Beethoven's Sonatas in A flat Op. 1110 and C minor Op. 111.

Lupu is an interventionist: he does his own thing; and if the results sometimes run against common perceptions of the music, or stretch the meaning of the composer's directions, they are never less than purposeful and well considered. To achieve this he is willing to take enormous interpretative and technical risks. When these come off which they usually do the results can be revelatory.

I was not convinced by the slow tempo of the concluding Rhapsody from Brahms's Op. 119, nor by the hectic dash of the opening Capriccio from Op. 116. But other individualities were persuasive. Amongst these one must count the slowish speed for the second movement of Beethoven's Op. 110 sonata. It was in direct proportion to the speed of the first movement, and knitted together these two movements, the material of which is subtly related. Indeed, one of the most striking features of the recital was the wholeness of Lupu's view of each piece. Then there were the extraordinary pianissimos in the Intermezzos from Op. 116, which usually got every note to sound, and with impeccable grading.

All this is the hallmark of a profound musical thinker. There was a cerebral quality in the playing; but it also had emotional range. Whether in the almost private, intimate approach to the quieter Brahms pieces, or in the power of the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 111 or in the ecstatic last movements of Ops. 110 and 111, Lupu drew the audience into his own experience of the music. It was a thought provoking and satisfying concert.