Most pianists begin a recital with a piece that allows them to warm up a little, and gives the audience a chance to settle in. Not Jason Hardink. He began his concert on Tuesday at Weill Recital Hall with Jason Eckardt’s “Echoes’ White Veil,” a dizzying, manic 12-minute work of almost stupefying difficulty.  Read more

Jason Hardink demonstrated why he deserves to be known as a “key” pianist on Tuesday evening to a nearly-full house at Weill Recital Hall. He made the strongest impression in the thorny 20th century works that he has made his calling card: Eckardt, Xenakis, Messiaen. His strengths are: a prodigious memory and uncanny independence of hands and fingers that allows him to create extremes of contrasting sonority, both soft and loud, often simultaneously; he is very musical, and I believed every note he played. Read more

In a week when the Academy Award for Best Documentary went to a film about a man climbing a 3,000-foot cliff without a rope, an analogous musical event took place at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall Tuesday night.  Read more

Jason Hardink obviously knew the art of the pregnant pause, from his very first piece last night. But the notes? Weill Hall’s audience never had a chance to find out. From an opening jazz riff that would have made Art Tatum resemble a mitten-wearing walrus, to Liszt etudes that transcended the keys, to three sections from a Messiaen classic that zipped through the whole New Testament, Mr. Hardink played the most consistently fast and furious music I’ve heard in a long time. Read more