It was a remarkable homecoming. John Chen has now been studying in Los Angeles for six months and his Tuesday night recital revealed a new flair and sense of relaxation in the pianist.
If Mozart's B flat sonata K 333 is pure charm-school then Chen emerged top of the class.
While all due respects were paid to Mozartian line and grace, there was also fetching impetuosity when the first movement turned to minor, or a cadenza was imminent in the final Allegretto grazioso.
Liszt's B minor Sonata was a technical triumph with its clarity of passage work, roaring storms of octaves and a Fugue with a real Mephistophelian sting in its tail.
But the pianist also had a firm grip on the piece's sprawling architecture where lesser musicians might have presented it as a mosaic of effects.
Schubert's Three Piano Pieces, intransigent outpourings to some, drew us surreptitiously into their world.
Again it was Chen's coupling of technique and musicianship that made the journey possible, especially through the twisting and turning dynamics of the first piece.
Henri Dutilleux's 1948 Sonata is a roving, effervescent masterpiece, setting up a discreetly jazzy groove only to have it mutated by Messiaen-like chord structures. While Chen was undeniably brilliant when the composer wanted fire to flash, he was also the epitome of cool precision in the later Chorale.
An encore was generous, a glimmering Valley of the Bells from Ravel's Miroirs. We were blessed, but would have been doubly so with Shadow Hands by young Auckland composer Claire Cowan - for some inexplicable reason, Chamber Music New Zealand scheduled this seven-minute commission for Dunedin and Wellington audiences only.
If Cowan's programme notes are anything to go by, the piece's jazz and rock echoes would have followed perfectly in the wake of the Dutilleux.
