Music / Rafał Łuszczewski in Recital. At Wesley Music Centre, May 1. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

In a striking show of virtuosity and bravura, Polish pianist Rafał Łuszczewski joined Friends of Chopin Australia and the Polish Embassy on Thursday evening to mark Poland’s ascendancy to presidency of the Council of the EU with a European musical odyssey.

Listed since 2003 on the Steinway & Sons Artists’ Roster in NYC, he has enjoyed a career of more than 25 years, performing in concert halls around the world.

He was trained at the Szymanowski Music University in Poland and the F Liszt Music University in Germany, he is regarded as a leading interpreter of Chopin’s works and is the founder of Chopin piano competitions in Peru and Ecuador.

Łuszczewski proved a mature and seasoned performer with a relaxed approach to his audience, while giving Wesley’s Yamaha a thorough working over in his two-hour performance.

Beginning in an expansive and relaxed style with The Masks by Polish-Jewish composer Ignaz Friedman, who had spent his dying days in Australia during World War II, he next treated us to the very familiar sounds of Liebeslied/Widmung, written by Robert Schumann as a lieder piece for his wife Clara, but adapted for the piano by Franz Liszt. Here Łuszczewski threw himself into the romantic mode with full gusto.

There followed his specialty, Fryderyk Chopin, as he performed four of his etudes. Their nicknames, he said, were not given by the composer himself, but well depicted the varied moods of the pieces.

For example, the intense and showy Etude in C minor, Op.10 No.12 – known as Revolutionary – gave Łuszczewski a chance to show off his brilliant left-hand technique, while the sadder Etude in E major, Op.10 No.3 – Tristesse – allowed him some quieter moments.

By now he was warming up. Chopin’s Ballade in A flat Major, Op.47 followed, an example, he said, of the composer’s work at its “most developed and complex”. He could hardly wipe the smile from his face.

After a short interval, the European musical odyssey continued with two Spanish dances from Manuel De Falla’s 1904-5 opera La Vida Breve, but as the evening drew to a close, his eyes turned homeward to Menuett in G by the famous Polish statesman-pianist Ignaz Jan Paderewski, a true celebrity who had been Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs during the Versailles Treaty negotiations after World War I.

But Łuszczewski had saved the best until last, frankly admitting that “the highlight” of the evening would be a very rare performance of British composer Richard Addinsell’s renowned Warsaw Concerto, arranged for piano solo by Luszczewski himself.

One of the most recognised pieces of film music ever written, it was commissioned by a British film company making the romantic wartime movie Dangerous Moonlight, with the stipulation that the work must be in the style of Rachmaninov, who had refused the job.

Before launching into a grand, passionate performance of this incredibly famous short concerto, Łuszczewski told us what he thought of its resemblance to Rachmaninov, saying: “I think he did a pretty good job”.