Lang Lang's persuasive power

As a breed, there's probably no group that more loudly pines for a restoration of individualism than classical music fans. Then along comes an individualist, and you can almost set your watch by the 3.8 seconds it takes before hearing the cries of artistic perfidy.

You can't have it both ways, as Lang Lang reminded us Sunday night in Verizon Hall. Sure, his recital of Schubert, Bartók, Debussy and Chopin was full of strangely mannered playing. But there's a trade-off: His ideas, all his own, are convincingly expressed. Which accounted for the evaporation of my own agitation over a curiously drawn Schubert

Piano Sonata in A major (D. 959

). Why did the pianist decide to underplay the quick blasts of dissonance and recurring storms of chromaticism that give this work its allure?

In many places it was enough to admire the technique and tone, making peace with the fact that Lang Lang will be Lang Lang and Schubert will survive.

There was another, more significant trade-off in this equation, which lay on the other side of the footlights. Few recital artists can fill a hall the size of 2,500-seat Verizon, but in this appearance (under the Kimmel Center Presents banner) Lang Lang did. And it was the audience of any presenter's dreams.

Here, on this night, marginalization of classical music was a specious myth. After a particularly convulsive and artless reading of Chopin's

Polonaise in A flat major (Op. 53), "Heroic,

" an audience of seniors, teens, hipsters, nerds, 20ish Asian girls, aficionados, newbies, and a surprising number of 6- to 9-year-olds jumped to their feet. Whistles and cheers. Flowers. Flashbulbs.

Who else on the classical stage can claim as close a connection with as diverse a public? Right now, maybe no one.

The visuals probably account for the better part of his popularity. Lang Lang swoons, wiggles his hips on the piano bench, sends a left hand off flamboyantly into midair. I made the decision after the first moments to avert my eyes, the better to render an opinion about the playing. I couldn't see what was going on in the Chopin, but what met my ears was a technical ease so complete it left aside any sense of struggle or triumph. It has a gloss-over-the-art characteristic inevitable at breakneck speed.

That same characteristic worked to the music's favor in Bartók's

Piano Sonata, BB 88 (Sz. 80)

, since the piano is basically a pitched percussion instrument here.

But then Lang Lang surprised in seven pieces from the Debussy

Preludes, Books 1 and 2

(which were performed in an order different from the one listed in the program book). Yes, the technique helped to heighten the drama. But it was also in service to some substantial variation in color: a wondrous string of glassy notes, for instance, and in one section upper-register tones so delicately rendered they sounded more like distant chimes than anything coming from the stage.

Sprung by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society from a New York orchestra pit for the afternoon, the Met Opera Players uncovered a few little-heard works Sunday at the otherwise lonely Independence Seaport Museum.

Janácek's

Mládí

for wind sextet (woodwind quintet plus bass clarinet) was home to some particularly sweet phrasing by oboist Elaine Douvas, and unusually refined underpinnings from bass clarinetist James Ognibene.

Pianist Gilbert Kalish joined a slightly different and quite expert ensemble in Poulenc's

Sextour

, a work whose great gift comes in the form of little melodramas so beautiful you can't believe they are depicting anything too tragic.