Anyone expecting a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete Goldberg Variations could have been forgiven for feeling like somebody who had turned up to the wrong wedding at Hong Kong City Hall on Monday evening. Yet when the gifted Hong Kong-born, Berlin and London-based pianist Chiyan Wong made Ferruccio Busoni’s heavily edited and abridged 1914 version of the Goldbergs the centrepiece of his recital, it was as good as given that Bach’s original score, and historically informed performance practice, would be thrown out of the window. This reviewer does not care for the Italian composer’s self-described attempt to “rescue this remarkable work for the concert hall” (a bizarre contradiction in itself), and finds its disregard of the repetition marks and its skipping over some of the 30 variations to make the Variations more “expedient” for public performance, among other changes, cringeworthy. That aside, Wong’s interpretation offered intrigue, and moments of beauty and tenderness, notably in his gentle caress of the Aria opening and the Adagio of the 18th variation. It also featured some whimsical and questionable additions - sometimes it felt like he had simply reached into the romantic box of tricks for effect, such as with the overtly flippant flurries and annoyingly penetrating trills in the 12th variation . The unusual and inauthentic ornamentation distracted from the musical lines, sometimes to the point of becoming nonsensical. Still, even if Busoni’s version of the returning Aria , played at the end of the variations, is skeletal and strangely threadbare, Wong nurtured it with an ethereal touch and made it extremely delicate and eerily comforting. Ultimately it was hard not to feel cheated and undernourished by Busoni’s harsh omission of nine of the 30 variations and of the repetitions of the 21 fortunate enough to have made the final cut. Would Wong consider returning one day to perform Bach’s score in its entirety with less use of the pedal, or none at all as many pianists successfully do? Let’s hope so. He has the dexterity and musical intelligence to do so with aplomb. Wong’s performance of Busoni’s impressive piano arrangement of Bach’s glorious Chaconne in D minor was a different story. Busoni’s adaptation of Bach’s partita for solo violin rightly enjoys universal popularity. Although Wong’s approach to the dramatic opening was gentler than customary, he soon intensified his focus on the development of the four-bar theme, making amends for the matter-of-fact mellowness of the opening with mighty octaves and arpeggios in subsequent passages. Some overuse of the pedal and a clumsy slip in leaping chords irritated slightly, but Wong once again demonstrated his masterful touch by gliding seamlessly through the dense writing and refined chords in the peaceful, chorale-like passages. Wong’s choice of Felix Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in E minor, No. 1 to open his recital was a clever one, in that it revealed many of his musical gifts and also served to emphasise the overwhelming influence Bach had on other composers. The brisk arpeggios in the opening Prelude were a mere stroll in the park for Wong, rippling waves that provided brilliant buoyancy to the sustained melody. His opening treatment of the Fugue’s theme had just the right dose of wistfulness and weight required to build textures upon, and he allowed it to then unravel perfectly to expose the beginning of a Bach chorale from St. Matthew Passion, which Wong made particularly loud and clear. And that was a good thing, for it served as a symbolic tribute to the great German baroque master and the universal respect for his music. Chiyan Wong Piano Recital, City Hall Concert Hall. Reviewed: April 26