E-Mail This Article to a Friend Piotr’s transformations Anderszewski brings Bach and Beethoven to Tanglewood BY DAVID WEININGER

"Compelling" is a word that attaches itself easily to pianist Piotr Anderszewski. At a time when accuracy in musical performance is valued over individuality, he offers interpretations that are imaginative, provocative, and full of character. He dismisses the idea that musicians should subjugate their artistic impulses to the authority of the text as "bullshit." His playing is imbued with the quality so lacking in today’s musicianship: personality.

So is his conversation. On the phone from his home in Paris, the Warsaw-born Anderszewski, who’ll be giving a solo recital at Tanglewood next Thursday, describes the current fad for realizing the composer’s intentions as accurately as possible as "false humility. Of course you have to respect the music, and of course you have to know about style and tradition. To make a good interpretation, you simply have to be educated — this I wouldn’t even discuss! But then comes your artistry. Otherwise, if you want to be as accurate as possible, a computer could do it better probably. But then, I wonder, who’d want to listen to the computer?"

You can hear that infusion of artistry on most of Anderszewski’s recordings, but it’s most conspicuous in his celebrated Virgin Classics reading of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, which has become his signature piece and which he’ll play at Tanglewood. Throughout the recording, you can hear sharper accents, a few pauses, slightly adjusted tempos and dynamics — all in an effort to throw the details of this most puzzling of Beethoven’s works into fresh light. Even when they sound mannered, his interventions disrupt your expectations enough to make you hear the piece differently.

The last of Beethoven’s large-scale works for solo piano, and probably his most demanding in the genre, these 33 "transformations" — or "Beethovenizations," as Anderszewski calls them — of a simple waltz by a mostly forgotten composer are for him "Beethoven in his entirety — there is drama, there is humor, sarcasm, something transcendental going on towards the end." And they yield nothing to Beethoven’s other late piano works. "When I play some Beethoven sonatas after the Diabellis, I’m always missing something. I never feel such plenitude as when I play the Diabellis, where I feel that everything has been expressed."

The other cornerstone of Anderszewski’s repertoire is Bach, whose First, Third, and Sixth Partitas he recently recorded for Virgin. Again, his interpretations are often enlightening and sometimes perplexing. Thinking of the two giants of the Austro-German tradition together leads him to some interesting reflections on the role of counterpoint in their works. "To me, Bach is a born contrapuntist. You feel that the whole thing comes extremely naturally: the moment he wrote the first note, he had the last note in his mind. With Beethoven, you feel a sense of fight. There is a sense of Beethoven trying to be contrapuntal, of being a slave to the rules — and then there is this completely free spirit that boils up within him." For Anderszewski, Beethoven’s most expressive counterpoint comes in the Missa solemnis, which he regards as perhaps that composer’s greatest creation. "So underrated. It’s my dream to conduct it — and I will do it! Every note of the Mass is just remarkable."

Anderszewski’s career has taken wing since he won the Gilmore Artist Award in 2002. The prize — which carries a $300,000 purse earmarked mostly for career development — is awarded once every four years to a keyboard artist (not necessarily a pianist), who usually doesn’t know that his or her career is being monitored. Asked how his life has changed since receiving the prize, he laughs, "Well, since then I’m probably more wanted!" In a more serious vein, he admits, "It gave me confidence — not that I really lack confidence, but in the moments of doubt we all have, it helps to feel that what you do makes sense not only for you but for other people as well."

That’s a far cry from his attitude in 1990, when during the Leeds International Piano Competition he walked off the stage in the midst of Webern’s Opus 27 Variations for Piano, dissatisfied with his performance. He seems to have mellowed since then. "I’m perhaps more indulgent. With a little bit of age and experience, you accept the fact that perfection doesn’t really exist. You can get close to it as much as possible, but if we reach that perfection, we would die — perfection is death for the artist."

Mention of "age and experience" might sound disingenuous coming from a 34-year-old. In fact, the one trait one doesn’t want Anderszewski to lose is the youthful impulsiveness that makes him such an involving artist. Let’s hope the 300 grand won’t have any effect on that.

Piotr Anderszewski plays Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Bach’s First Partita, and three Preludes and Fugues from the second volume of Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier next Thursday, July 31, at 8:30 p.m. at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall. Tickets are $14 to $43; call (888) 266-1200.