On Friday evening, a rapt audience enjoyed a stunning recital given by Russian pianist Alexei Sultanov at the City Hall Theatre. Still only 23 years old, Mr.

Sultanov took the musical world by storm in 1989 when he won the Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Despite his youth, he is a consummate artist who combines technical brilliance with an almost uncanny mastery of style.

The selected programme was well contrasted and began with some familiar and well loved pieces by Frederick Chopin.

In 1830, Chopin left Warsaw for Vienna never to return to his beloved Poland.

Due to the general political turmoil in Europe and the subsequent invasion of Poland by Russia, he was to settle in Paris and he remained there for the rest of his relatively short life. He died when only 39 years old.

The early nineteenth century had seen the rise of the piano as a focal point of major recital work. In 1847 Monsieur Blanchard, reviewer for the "Gazette Musical''' would announce: "Cultivating the piano has become something that is as essential to social harmony as the cultivation of the potato is to the existence of the people.'' When Chopin arrived in Paris, it was the day of the great piano virtuosi, Thalberg, Kalkbrenner and, of course, Liszt. Surrounded by Parisien society and wealthy and cultivated emigres, Chopin soon enjoyed celebrity as a pianist and as a composer. He was a new voice however. He was not interested in mere technique like many of the musical show men of the day.

Instead he was to take the piano to inspirational heights of poetic brilliance. It is fortunate for us that Alexei Sultanov brought to Bermuda playing that was the quintessence of Chopin's great genius.

The Ballade in G minor with which Mr. Sultanov began the recital is extremely popular and quite a tour de force. Seldom have we heard the formidable Coda played with such impetuosity. It was a thrilling start to the evening.

The two waltzes which followed, Grande Valse Brilliant in E flat major and the well known "Minute Waltz'' in D flat major were marked by delicacy, poise and simple elegance.

Chopin wrote nineteen Nocturnes of which one of the most epic is certainly No 13 Opus 48 in the tragic key of C minor. Here as in the following Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise, Mr. Sultanov unleashed the full power of a superb technique. His playing was marked at all times by fine phrasing, sensitive rubato and a wonderful dynamic control, the letter despite some technical problems with the piano due to humidity. The Grand Polonaise brought the first part of the programme to a brilliant conclusion.

After the intermission, Mr. Sultanov the poet was replaced by Mr. Sultanov the young lion. Here the great sweeping lyricism of the Romantic Era was replaced by the pulsating rhythmic urgency of the Twentieth Century in works by the Russian composers Scriabin and Prokofiev.

Scriabin who died in 1915 and was therefore pre-revolutionary suffered none of the constraints of the late Russian matters. His music, though rooted in the late nineteenth century traditions of Imperial Russia, was certainly moving rapidly to the dissonance of the twentieth century. This was not a development encouraged by subsequent Communist governments. Their credo "Simple music for simple people'', a daunting restriction for an intelligent being, and for a genius an impossibility, caused much heartache for composers such as Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Prokofiev. That the Russians have been left after seventy years of Communist rule without basic necessities is sad but hardly surprising. That artistic integrity survived, given the lunacy of the political regime, is nothing short of a miracle.

Mr. Sultanov, relaxed and always economical in movement, played the Sonata No.

5 by Scriabin and the Sonata No. 7 by Prokofiev with a combination of elan and primitive force. The Prokofiev Sonata in three movement was particularly interesting in stylistic variety, with toccata figures in the first movement yielding to an almost banal chromaticism in the middle Lento after which we found ourselves hurting to a climax of incredible ferocity in the finale aptly named "Precipitato''.

The recital ended only after the enthusiastic audience was treated to two encores, Prelude in A Flat Minor by Scriabin and the Revolutionary Study by Chopin.

Thanks are due to The Festival Committee for organising the debut in Bermuda of such an outstanding world-class performer.

-- Marjorie Pettit ALEXEI SULTANOV -- Consummate artist, despite youth, thrilled audience.