By Peter Dobrin
Philadelpia Inquirer Music Critic

If there was a piece, movement or phrase that could knock Jeremy Denk off balance even for a second, it was nowhere to be heard Wednesday night at the pianist's Perelman Theater recital. Denk has a wonderful way of conveying inevitability. If any listener parted ways with him on interpretive issues, there was no arguing with his strong conviction.

He even swayed the music critic. Chopin's Piano Sonata in B minor (Op. 58) is one of those repertoire landmarks that has etched its way into the part of the brain that stores expectations. I couldn't help thinking: Oh, you choose to emphasize that note, and this is what you consider the arrival point. Denk generally kept on the reserved side of the expressive scale, eschewing exaggeration and sentimentality.

And by the end of the first movement - that supremely concise, perfect conception of what a sonata's first movement should be - the pianist had won me over.

But Denk is not a generally reserved player, and he doesn't shy away from expressiveness, as his way with Bartók showed. Opening with the 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs, Denk took the view that the piano is in fact not a percussion instrument, but a vocal one. In Bartók's Piano Sonata from 1926, Denk was no less expressive. He manipulated articulation for expressive purposes, finding sounds from spiky to gauzy to creeping legato. He was sufficiently bellicose, though never harsh.

In Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wien, what came across was perhaps Denk's greatest asset beyond the tools of pure skill. There's a quickness in his playing, a fluidity, that, if thought of as a quality in a conversationalist, would translate into being able to express any thought by picking just the right word with ease. It's not easy, of course, except when you're the grateful listener.