Thomas Pandolfi is an exceptional virtuoso pianist who enjoys a comfortable connection with the audience. Not only is he a convincing artist at the piano, but he is also skillful in engaging the audience before each piece with helpful comments on what to expect to hear — and he is as comfortable using a microphone to introduce each piece as he is in the actual performances...It’s a pleasure to hear difficult music when the performer has such masterful control over its technical demands...Perhaps that sense of ease is one of Pandolfi’s greatest assets...His performance of Liszt's Dante Sonata was riveting, not only because of the bazillion notes required in the score, but because Pandolfi built the architecture of the piece in a way that the listener could clearly follow. The middle section elicited some of the most delicate playing of the entire program...Along with the apparent ease of playing, Pandolfi plays with an economy of motion. There is no extraneous or wasted motion even in the most virtuoso passages. One would expect the Liszt Sonata to exhaust the energy of the player, but there was plenty more to go with two encores. The fireworks heard earlier in the program continued through, bringing to memory some of Vladimir Horowitz’s grand and pianistic transcriptions. The fireworks shifted to a warm closing statement in the second encore, Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Op. 9, No. 2, played with poetic beauty.