AS part of the Late Music concert series, Ian Pace returned to York last Saturday to give a triptych of concerts surveying 20th century piano music. This was a unique combination of dazzling virtuosity, intelligent interpretation and intuitive performance to mark his 50th birthday year.

Opening with a wash of sound and leading into fervent harmonic and rhythmic abandon, the Hawthorne movement from Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata truly wowed. This was nail-biting stuff, but Pace’s performance was not without a few pangs of irony.

Within this uncompromisingly virtuosic programme, Satie’s Enfantillages Picturesques were striking in their simplicity, but Pace’s clever interpretation offered unexpected nuance. Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro was another highlight, delivered with guttural intensity, with Pace deftly avoiding the pulverisation that the work often receives.

To open the second concert, the pianist revelled in the ebbing Romanticism of pieces from Janácek’s On An Overgrown Path. A nimble performance of Crawford Seeger’s Piano Study In Mixed Accents was the standout here: although only a minute long, it showcased his astounding virtuosity as he brought out the shifting inflections and ferociously quick melody with impeccable precision.

Fastidious in representing the minutiae of a score, but also injecting his own personality at every opportunity, Pace gave real character to each of the short gestures and sequences in Tippett’s mosaic Piano Sonata No. 2.

This was a polished and exhilarating performance in which Pace demonstrated his infectious passion for this repertoire. He is undoubtedly at home in the rarefied world of musical Modernism.

Review by Charlotte Armstrong