GOLD MEDAL SERIES : NAOUMOFF IN AMBASSADOR RECITAL

Another budding musician, the French pianist, Emile Naoumoff, 25 years old last month, appeared in the Gold Medal Series at Ambassador Auditorium on Monday night, making a deep impression with some idiomatic Debussy and authoritative Chopin before intermission, splendid Ravel and percussive Stravinsky afterward.

Though Naoumoff’s program failed to indicate the breadth and versatility of his repertory, what he did play showed considerable pianistic and coloristic resources.

Three Debussy preludes and the first set of the composer’s “Images” proved utterly articulate, fluent and nuanced, the pianist achieving an edgeless and shimmering tone and sparkling clarity, especially in “Minstrels,” “Hommage a Rameau” and “Mouvement.” The same analytical pertinence and faceted touches marked Naoumoff’s playing of Ravel’s “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales,” a suite that sometimes seems like a collection of heartless ditties; here, each item had character and definition, and the total emerged full of Weltschmerz and melancholy.

The high point of the evening was Naoumoff’s elegant and poignant performance of four Nocturnes by Chopin, readings combining heroism, poetry, spontaneity and eloquently sculptured soundscapes. Such perfectly proportioned readings are rare in any generation; in Naoumoff’s, they seem miraculous.

After a noisy and unnecessary assault on the piano in his own, virtuosic transcription of the three final movements from Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” Naoumoff offered a single encore in the Bach chorale on “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.”