MUSIC REVIEWS : PIANIST DORIS CHEN AT AMBASSADOR

For some, the art of music performance is measured by the successful pursuit of poetry and introspection, with virtuosity a mere handmaiden to that goal. For others, it is heroic display and its accompanying exhilaration that grabs the attention.

At present, Doris Chen belongs to the latter group. Or so the tiny Taiwanese pianist persuaded some listeners Monday at Ambassador Auditorium, where she played a recital on the Gold Medal Series. Clearly, anyone who chooses Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit,” Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor and three of Rachmaninoff’s “Etudes-Tableaux” has such goals in mind.

What’s more, Chen’s zeal for riding enormously difficult music could almost be seen in the flying dust as she galloped by. So could the difficulty be heard, however, and that was unfortunate. A peripheral din from over-pedaling muddied the sound waves and robbed the pianist’s tone of a necessary sensuality and nuance.

Despite her obvious fluency and high bravura quotient, the excitement Chen managed to stir up was of a single dimension--one unmindful of the spaces between notes. She lost focus, and thus tension, in the slow movement of “Gaspard,” for instance, and suffered several memory lapses throughout the evening. Not all that surprising, given the nature of her challenge.

She began the program with Beethoven--first, his appropriately simple “Andante Favori,” which came across rather too glibly. But the D-major Sonata, Opus 10, No. 3, proved ideal for a pianist who can profit from a blueprint: Here, Chen stayed connected to the music, honoring its soul-searching/capricious duality.