The lesson learned at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night was that, if you just keep clapping and cheering, Evgeny Kissin will keep playing the piano. At the end of a marvelous recital sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society, Kissin returned to the stage for countless ovations. The wild yelling from the orchestra level and the balconies was enough to induce him to play eight encores. After about 45 minutes of nightcaps — from Liszt (Liebestraüme, S.541), to Mendelssohn (the Spinning Song from Lieder ohne Worte), to a truly tacky and yet astounding arrangement of the gypsy dance from the Carmen Fantasy, to Chopin (the waltz C-sharp minor, op. 64, no. 2, as well as no. 1 from the same opus, the “Minute Waltz”), to Brahms (another waltz, op. 39, no. 15, in A-flat major), back to Chopin again (a breathtaking C-sharp minor Fantasy-Impromptu, op. 66, recorded on his new Verbier Festival recital CD), and one of the Beethoven écossaises (WoO 83, no. 1) — the audience finally gave up and went home. If you think we should be proud of earning eight encores, when Kissin appeared with the same program in Milan last November, he played twelve during an hour and a half of ovations. Washington, you let me down!

The actual recital began with a Schubert sonata (E-flat major, D. 568), performed by Kissin with consummate restraint. With the entire dynamic range of the piece circumscribed within a tiny area, most of the melodies seemed like distant memories of a happier time. Kissin bobs around less at the keyboard now, although his face was often contorted with emotion and he hummed sometimes during the Schubert slow movement. The game of control that he played in the Schubert was no less fine in detail for being restricted in scope like a Dürer engraving. All of the energy repressed during the sonata was released in the set of 32 variations (C minor, WoO 80) by Beethoven. By not giving the piece an opus number (WoO = Werk ohne Opuszahl), Beethoven indicated that it did not belong somehow with the rest of his compositions. Indeed, at just eight measures in length, the original theme is little more than a repeating bass line and chord pattern, recalling the Folia melody so popular in the Baroque period for variation sets — only superficially, since some of the chords are different. From the first couple variations, Kissin produced remarkable variations of color and articulation, with explosive strength bottled up from the Schubert.