Pianist Rebecca Penneys' Sunday afternoon recital at Kilbourn Hall revealed an artist of striking originality.  An Eastman School of Music professor, Penneys is a pianist of prodigious talent: She possesses a daredevil technique and the sort of charismatic stage presence that demands attention.  Yet on Sunday it was her interpretive gift that most captivated the listener.

At a time when so many pianists seem content to play the thrice-familiar works of the repertoire in much the thrice-familiar way, Penneys gave performances that were revelatory.  Indeed, in her hands, the great works of Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, Debussy, Mozart and Gershwin-Wild that made up her program sounded novel, as if they were just composed yesterday.

Her performance of Mozart's Sonata in A Major, K. 331 unfolded with the freedom of an improvisation.  Certainly, Penneys does not view a Mozart score as a kind of inviolable blueprint that must be reproduced exactly the same way every time, like a photocopy.

In fact, one suspects that even Penneys didn't know exactly how the Mozart would go until she sat down to play it, since she was obviously re-creating the music on the spot.

There was an easy ebb and flow, in her tempos, and the many ornaments that decorated her playing were clearly spontaneous inventions.

For all of her originality, Penneys is not willfully eccentric; her interpretations were always informed by a deep understanding of the proper classical and romantic performance styles.  And so she was able to make grand rhetorical statements, complete with tasteful rubatos, in her performances of Chopin's Ballade in G minor and Liszt's Vallee d'Obermann while never slipping into salon sentimentality.

Likewise, she played Debussy's Images, Book One with luminous clarity (there was none of the over-marinated pedaling often associated with this composer) and Grieg's Five Lyric Pieces with charm and affecting lyricism.

Penneys closed with bracing renditions of Three Virtuoso Etudes, Earl Wild's pyrotechnical arrangements of Gershwin songs.

It was a thrilling performance that proved to the overflow crowd (more than 100 late-comers were turned away) that with Penneys, the golden age of piano playing is not only alive, but thriving.