JONATHAN BISS, PIANO
Works by Berg, Mozart, Kirchner and Schubert. Attended Tuesday at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, Manhattan. Information at www.carnegiehall.org or 212-247-7800.

At 24, Jonathan Biss is one of the world's most sought-after pianists, boasting a clutch of prestigious awards, an impressive EMI debut CD of Beethoven and Robert Schumann, and the kind of awestruck word of mouth that no puffery can generate. Tuesday's recital at Zankel Hall showed that the fuss is fully warranted, with Biss offering poised, wise-beyond-his-years readings of challenging works.

The sweet and tortured lyricism of Vienna was the unifying theme of the program, which opened with Alban Berg's Sonata, Op. 1. Less disciplined interpreters tend to treat Berg's music as an excuse for mawkishness and languor—or, worse, as a grim exercise in modernist woe. Biss instead brought a brisk touch and a startling transparency of tone to the sonata. There was a fluid but not shapeless quality to his playing, a sense of lucidity and control even as he built Berg's inward, single-movement work to its heaving climax.

As played by Biss, the rippling ornaments in Mozart's Rondo in A Minor were no mere frills, but tiny bursts of musical energy poised to erupt. The silvery innocence of his pianism in the opening grew more urgent and full-bodied as Mozart's music wandered off into dark, questioning realms. Here, too, Biss's delicacy of attack served well, allowing the rondo's counterpoint to unfold with clarity, undimmed by a haze of harmonics or bombast.

Like Berg, Leon Kirchner studied under Arnold Schoenberg. His Sonata No. 2, composed in 2003, recalls the restlessness and melting grace of Berg's music. Biss showed himself master of this work's many aspects, from its cool, watery passages (reminiscent of Debussy) to its grand, jarring conclusion.

Biss devoted the second half of his program to Franz Schubert's Sonata in A Major, D. 959, which was completed weeks before the composer's death. Vast and mercurial, the sonata bears and even demands a variety of approaches: the mesmerizing darkness of a Stephen Kovacevich, the febrile lyricism of a Mitsuko Uchida, the demonic intensity of a Sviatoslav Richter. While Biss does not yet belong in such august company, his performance held the Zankel audience breathless throughout Schubert's long and demanding musical journey.

Stark, percussive attacks in the first movement gave way to an ecstatic filigree that, for all its sweetness, soon turned glassy, setting up the dejected restatement of the opening theme. Biss hung a veil of sadness over the lovely melody that introduces the andantino. The precision of his playing actually heightened the violence and off-kilter mania of the movement's central section.

The scherzo was all nervous splatters, followed by a final movement whose would-be jaunty opening seemed suffocated by Schubert's rapturous embellishments. Broken and soured restatements of that initial theme, scarred by silence, stabbed at the heart.

Only seven years younger than Schubert was when he composed this shattering sonata, Biss seems to be a kindred soul, on the brink of what promises to be a glorious musical career.