Korean-American pianist Mi-Eun Kim, Director of Keyboard Studies at MIT, inaugurated the Institute’s much-anticipated Building W18 (the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building) and its very promising New York Steinway D (with Spirio R) for the public on Saturday afternoon. [click HERE for more about the space]. The Tull Hall recital jumped more than 200 years between its first and second halves, but the pianist’s well-weighted yet fleet and flexible takes spanned the divide, bringing the six composers into closer accord than one might have expected.

Kim realized the Allegro of Haydn’s Sonata in E-flat Major Hob XVI:49 wittily, and thankfully without the flippancy that some pianists bring. At once we recognized a talent we could enjoy without any performance anxiety. She dispatched the Allegro confidently and emphatically highlighting all of Haydn’s arresting turns. Wonderfully outgoing, in sound if not countenance, she could contrast singing legato with crisp alberti. Her bass growled in mock menace while the tenor range at times sounded like a plucked cello. Kim differentiated her repeats with freshness and dove into fugal sections with a learned yet romantic mien; the “music-box” second theme properly channeled its namesake. Surely papa Haydn would have appreciated her jollity. Like a storyteller, she sang the Adagio with warm, patient shaping, and lilted with delicacy. Her broad dynamic range suited the modern piano perfectly, making no apparent nod to early instruments’ limitations. To the Finale: Presto  she brought a relaxed tempo that never became pushy or show-offish, though at the same time we felt that she could have gone off on a clean and accurate tear on another day. Her nicely breathed Luft Pausen could interrupt the Sturm und Drang with inevitability and she always stepped back from what could have devolved into romantic excess with signal elegance and restraint.

She traversed the Presto of Bach’s seven-movement English Suite No. 3 in G Minor BWV 808 with active engagement, coloring with infinite differentiation between staccato and legato, employing both phrase shaping and harpsichord-like step-dynamics to bring out lines and voices, in a somewhat Gouldian manner. In the very satisfying Allemande, something resembling an enriched two-part invention, she eschewed HIP rigidity, keeping the underlying pulse clear while inflecting it with warmth. She never merely spun notes in her Bach. The slow-fast movements alternated between exhilaration and repose—impetuosity and contemplation. We loved the sonic miniature in the second Gavotte, as well as her half-pedaling for color…and what great trills. The closing Gigue raced by with the precision and velocity of a motorized harpsichord plugged into a high voltage outlet.

Three works that cohered with inevitability formed the vivid set which began the second half. Ravel begins “Oiseaux tristes” from Miroirs in a nebulous realm from which a Gallically sad solo songbird emerges. Flocks careen about in a canary cadenza; it’s over when the sad bird sings into a total eclipse. We admired, Kim’s exquisite refinement as well as her rhythmic freedom that retained a firm spine. Messiaen’s Prelude No. 2 Chant d’extase dans un paysage triste followed as if mirroring Miroirs, and maybe Debussy, carrying the avian visitors to us in a fever dream. Famously synesthetic, Messiaen simultaneously saw and heard “gray, mauve, Prussian blue at the beginning and end; diamond and silver at the middle.” In Prelude No. 2 Chant d’extase dans un paysage triste, marked Lent et triste (sad and slow), Kim affectively colored while executing rapid-fire handfuls of accidental-filled chords, arpeggios, and jumps while honoring the mostly p-ppp range. The last chord is in fact marked pppp.

Morphing from fever dream to an athletic contest and looking quite Spanish in a black gown with a ruffled black shoulder ornament, Kim carried off Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole S.254 almost as a guilty pleasure. We admired her flawless flamenco fire and filigree, irrepressible scales, heavy-metal double octaves, intensity, speed and rhapsodic abandon.

Mi-Eun Kim, the successor to David Deveau (local favorite and soloist on four continents), possesses a vast interpretative range and the chops to carry off seemingly anything that interests her without breaking a sweat. Plus she gives us something to think about in her repertoire choices. What a wonderful introduction to the hall and the woman in the spotlight.

Lee Eiseman is the publisher of the Intelligencer