American Pianists Association; Butler U; Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall; Nov. 16.

Grace Fong may well be on her way to being considered the Dinu Lipatti of the 21st century. Many consider the latter — a Rumanian who died at age 33 of Hodgkin's disease — the greatest pianistic talent of the 20th century. Fong, a slender woman of Asian descent and a winsome smile, performed Monday night as one of two 2009 APA Fellows, awarded last April. Fong moves her fingers over any kind of pianistic passage any composer can conjure up with seemingly absolute effortlessness, while shaping and phrasing any kind of structure with perfection and ultimate musicality. She is above being a mere virtuoso — she occupies a lofty stratosphere of her own making. Fong opened with Prokofiev’s very early Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 1 (1909) — written when he was 18. Though mostly loud and boisterous, it sounds much more like Chopin than Prokofiev, but Fong made it interesting, almost magical. She did the same with her program’s final work, the Carl Vine Sonata No. 1 (1990) — a piece she repeated from her APA Premiere-Series appearance a year ago — though the two works could hardly be more contrasting in style. This work, filled with modernist punctuations — including Fong’s forearm striking the keyboard, impressed me a bit more than a year ago. In between, Fong played two Chopin impromptus, his Tarantella, Op. 43, Liszt’s show-offy Ballade No. 2 in B Minor and Mozart’s Variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” K. 265. All these pieces, in bearing Fong’s special stamp, also revealed their composers as few other performers can do.