Karol Sue Reddington -- Dunbarton School of Music -- City Hall Theatre -- October 28 Since Karol Sue Reddington's arrival here just over a year ago, we have been given tantalising hints of her prodigious talent, primarily as an accomplished accompanist. This weekend, she took centre stage in a dazzling solo debut at City Hall.

In a daunting programme that embraced both piano and harpsichord, she was able to give full rein to her remarkable range of musicianship.

Ms Reddington came here with an unusually impressive pedigree: having trained with some of the world's top musicians, she has performed on the international concert stage, most notably at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and at the International Arts Festival of Iceland. She also specialises in 20th century music, promoting major works in premiere performances in the US, France and Hong Kong.

Music of an earlier age beckoned, however, for this recital, in which her considerable technical powers allowed her to engage in impressive musical dialogues with three of the greatest exponents of the keyboard -- namely, Mozart, Bach and Chopin. The programme opened with Mozart's reflective and serenely beautiful Rondo in A minor, which actually turned out to be his last work in that form, written just four years before his death in 1791. As the name implies, the melodic themes evolve, embellished each time around with various permutations of Mozart's harmonic genius. Ms Reddington immediately revealed her impeccable sense of phrasing, whether it was in the lighter moments of distilled Mozartean charm or in the sense of romantic languor that permeates this piece.

It has been said that Chopin is to the piano what Beethoven is to the orchestra. The Franco-Polish composer wrote almost exclusively for that instrument and, like Mozart before him, was writing his own piano pieces by the age of six. The improvisational air of some of his music is highly deceptive: the composer who epitomised the Romantic era, re-defined the true scope of his chosen instrument. Celebrated for his `rubato' in which the right hand pursues a free, wandering rhythm over the meticulously strict tempo of the left, Chopin pushes this device to the limits in his Barcarolle in F major. Ms Reddington was in total command of this fiendishly difficult piece, achieving a wondrous balance between the mix of authoritative grandeur and dreamlike lyricism which characterises this work.

The composer who swept Parisian `high society' into a fever of excitement was, at heart, a Polish compatriot who constantly returned to the folk music of his childhood for inspiration. Ms Reddington chose two of his loveliest Mazurkas -- in B minor and C minor -- demonstrating with breathtaking clarity, the distinctive nuances and stylishly broken rhythms which were rooted in the traditional dances of his native land.

For her last Chopin selection, she played the Polonnaise in F minor, impressively at ease in this magisterial and often dramatic work, again, totally in control of the insistent dance rhythms that dominate throughout.

These pieces demand technical virtuosity -- a quality which obviously gives Karol Sue Reddington no problem at all.

The first half of the programme ended with two pieces from the Iberia Suite by Isaac Albeniz, another composer who was one of the first to exploit the musical heritage of his country. In this case, the country was Spain, but the composer who was born just a decade after Chopin's death also anticipated the next major `movement' in music -- that of Impressionism as exemplified by his perhaps better known friend and collaborator, the Frenchman, Debussy. Again, Ms Reddington captured exquisitely the rhythms of a country where dance is the breath of life, hinting of clicking castanets and the sensual echo of guitars rippling through long Spanish siestas.

Probably the most popular of Bach's works are his Brandenburg Concerti and the second half was devoted to the 5th, in D major.

Joined by Dunbarton colleagues, flautist Jack Kripl, violinist Charles Li and the newly formed Bach Chamber Group, Ms Reddington switched to the harpsichord -- the piano of Bach's day -- and revealed here, as well, her complete mastery of this instrument. Near the end of the first movement, there is a virtuosic cadenza for the harpsichord which provided a climactic passage in a work otherwise noted for the flowing, back-and-forth dialogue between the three soloists. She was more than ably supported by Jack Kripl and Charles Li who played with assured fluency and sensitivity. The chamber orchestra, consisting of five violins, two violas and two cellos, comprised some of Bermuda's finest musicians. Once again, this piece alone would confirm the very high musical standards that are now almost taken for granted in Bermuda. Unfortunately, audiences have not matured in a similar fashion: they still clap like mad in the pause which separates each movement of a work. This was a memorable solo debut for Karol Sue Reddington. We are fortunate to have an artist of this calibre in our midst.

Patricia Calnan IMPRESSIVE DEBUT -- Pianist and Director of the Dunbarton School of Music, Ms Karol Sue Reddington, who gave her first solo recital at City Hall this weekend.

SHOW REVIEW