I remember writing about the first Esther Honens International Piano Competition of 1992 for ARG after hearing the semi-final and final rounds while I was in Calgary conducting a seminar for aspiring music critics at Mt Royal College—one of the sideshows for the main event that also included recitals by all the jurors and even master classes from some of the participants. I expressed particular regret that one of the Honens contestants, Katherine Chi, didn't make it to the last round. Her account of the Schubert G-flat Impromptu, D.899:3, made a lasting impression, and I felt that her superb performance of the Brahms F minor Piano Quintet with the Shanghai Quartet ought to have earned her at least the reward for the best chamber music performance. But all's well that ends well. Katherine Chi returned for another go at the Honens in 2000 and that time garnered the first prize; her April 23 recital at Weill Hall was her (and our) reward. Chi is Canadian by birth but largely American by training. She attended Curtis as a youngster, where she studied with Seymour Lipkin (himself a Rudolf Serkin student), and of course spent some time at Marlboro. When I heard her in the 1992 Honens, she had been studying in Boston with Russell Sherman and, I was told, moved to England to take some lessons from the Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko (who had been on the Honens jury). She spent a few years in Italy, and the still youthful artist is now based in Cologne. She is no longer a superstudent, but a thoroughly seasoned performer. How many players of any age or experience could begin a program with Beethoven's daunting Hammerklavier Sonata and deliver that behemoth with such certitude and musical command? Chi opted for a middle-ground interpretive approach, eschewing on the one hand Beethoven's insanely fast metronome marking (a half-note equals 138) and, on the other, post-Wagnerian inflation. And from my seat on the left side I could see that Chi, to her eternal credit, took note of the composer s instructions to take the opening leaps of the first movement with her left hand alone, and was familiar with many of the controversial textual options (she chose a variant in the third movement, from one of the sonata's London editions; I remember hearing Peter Serkin play it on one of his Pro Arte recordings). And, most important, she made the piece sound completely fiery, innovative, convincing, and logical. Without undue pushing and pulling about, she was able to make the many transitions of mood and tempo while at the same time remindin g us that op. 106 is the cumulative outgrowth of the quintessential classical sonata. Her masterly reading put me in mind of Solomon's elevated early 1950s reading for EMI (now on Testament). No higher praise could be offered. Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19, miracles of the composer's newly atonal style and of almost Webernesque compression, were rendered with fierce concentration and exquisite, audacious contrasts. I have noted on other occasions that much of Schoenberg's piano music is a direct outgrowth of late Brahms; that too--but as Chi played these pieces she also re-created a more restless Beethovenian emotional world. I am (to say the least) no great admirer of Leopold Godowsky's ornate decadence, but the great pianist's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes from Johann Strauss's "Fledermaus" was dispatched with the sort of technical savvy that precious few modern virtuosos could manage (Chi's rendition had brains as well as brawn). And what a pleasure to hear, as one of her encores, her singing performance of the Schubert Impromptu I had heard at the Honens competition. It exactly confirmed my memory of Calgary, 1992.