"From the ridiculous to the sublime" is one way to sum up Canadian pianist and composer ZeidwiG's debut Bermuda Festival performance at the Fairmont Southampton Resort on Friday evening. "Once seen, never forgotten" is another.

Either way, it is a rare concert where an artist of this calibre ¿ and he is an astonishing musician ¿ starts off misleading his audience into believing they are in for a night of clowning and craziness, interlaced with some snappy piano work, and then switches gears to reveal a talent as serious as it is prodigious.

Logic is not always the gift of the beholder, of course, but had one really thought about it, expecting the level of insane, slapstick humour to continue for two hours would have been unrealistic.

Yet there was always the prospect that it would resurface; not knowing when, or if, it would therefore created an underlying tension which ZeidwiG deftly exploited throughout.

To laugh or not to laugh, that was the question.

Getting the programme off to a deceptively serious start, the four Menuhin Foundation string teachers (Caroline Gledhill, Charles Knights, Karen O'Brien and Alison Johnsone) launched the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12, K414 in sprightly style, soon to be joined by ZeidwiG at the piano.

Gulled into believing that this was 'the real deal' made the sudden, noisy collapse of the piano stool, parts of the grand piano, and the pianist himself onto the stage floor all the more shocking and hilarious.

Thus began an extended comic routine, elements of which evoked memories of Charlie Chaplin and Marcel Marceau, that swept the audience along on an ever-rolling tide of laughter. With over-sized formal concert attire and a full halo of steel grey hair, this metamorphosed 'mad professor' launched into a series of zany mishaps which included crawling inside the piano; becoming 'trapped' under its fallen lid before being freed by a remote car door opener; wrestling with a large wad of gooey 'chewing gum'; holding a score between bare toes and playing the piano, note-perfect, with arms upstretched behind him; sitting on one leg of the broken piano stool (to concerned 'Ooohs' from the audience); and separately balancing an upturned violin and string bass on his face while playing.

Punctuating the visual mayhem, which eventually culminated in a stage littered with everything from broken furniture to wood scraps, cardboard and crumpled sheet music, were snippets of such classics as Beehoven's Fifth Sympony, 'Ave Maria' and 'Hava Nagila', all niftily performed in extraordinary circumstances.

Then suddenly...a serious resumption of the Mozart concerto in all its mellifluous beauty. The passages of its three movements (Allegro, Andante, Allegretto) offer lyrical melodies, expressions of eloquence, delicacy, sparkle, and subtly colourful tones, all of which the still-barefooted ZeidwiG and his excellent accompanists portrayed so well (and kudos to the quartet, by the way, for also fulfilling its comedic role so well).

The second half opened with the artist's own composition, 'Rainbow Concerto', which was simply magnificent. Breathtaking in its range and complexity, and even more so in its execution, it could not have been a more impressive way in which to lay one's credentials as a composer and musician before an audience.

Viewed in the context of a meteorological essay, it evoked images as varied as the weather itself ¿ everything from sudden storms to warm sunshine. How easy it was to envisage a shifting tapestry of lowering skies, thunderstorms, lightning flashes, the pitter-patter of dainty raindrops, drifting clouds, and idyllic blue skies, to all of which sustained pedalling added washes of haze.

Then came one of those puzzling moments near its end when, from beyond the stage, came the recorded sound of what seemed to be a church bell, a melodic mantel clock, a full-on 'celestial choir' and organ, the latter two of which might, or might not, have been a deliberate interjection of humorous schmaltz ¿ in which case, were we right to chuckle or not?

Either way, ZeidwiG's performance was dynamic, a stunning display of superlative musicianship and talent, which would be repeated in the works which followed.

Softer in mood, perhaps to bring us down from the previous 'high', and much shorter than his previous composition, 'Birth' was no less attractive for its relative brevity.

Then came Debussy's 'Claire de Lune' ¿ or in this case, 'Claire de Loon' ¿ at least initially when, following the familiar opening passages, the artist (no doubt inspired by the traditional hackings of winter coughers), suddenly waded into the audience to administer 'medicine' to the 'afflicted'. Back on stage and waggling a giant, warning spoon to potential offenders, he first mimicked their plight and 'dosed' himself before resuming the full score, and delivering a reading as exquisite and shimmering as moonlight itself.

The intoxicating beauty of Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' demands much of the performer. With its changing tempi, wide-ranging moods, and complex embellishments on the core melody, it is endlessly fascinating no matter how many times one hears it. Yet ZeidwiG took us on a journey so clearly defined and explicit in its robustness, passion and colour, that it seemed as if we were hearing each note for the first time.

Clearly an artist who thrives on big challenges and even bigger sounds, this was another perfect vehicle with which to showcase all of the technical and interpretive qualities which make him such an outstanding artist. Dazzling fingerwork, the ability to move impercepibly frommaestoso topianissimo, and to extract every nuance from such a lush and richly hued score, made this a brilliant, powerful and compelling tour de force.

To those who imagined, in the absence of an orchestra, that the final work ¿ Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1 in B Flat ¿ would be some sort of joke, ZeidwiG handily proved them wrong. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, he did have the requisite accompaniment: on tape. This, of course, required skilful timing and musicianship, not to mention supreme faith in the sound man, but pull it off he did, perfectly convincingly, with a soupçon of humour on the rare occasions when his invisible companions were a whisker out of sync.

Generously, ZeidwiG rewarded his enthusiastic audience with two encores, one of which, 'Chopsticks', was played not with his fingers but chopsticks. How funny was that? Very.