Julien Libeer is an exceptionally interesting recital programmer.

When the Belgian pianist performed for the Miami International Piano Festival in 2023, he coupled each of a series of Preludes and Fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier with a companion pieces, from Beethoven to Ligeti.

Libeer returned to the festival on Sunday with an equally imaginative program centered around the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel. The concert at the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center mixed significant Ravel keyboard scores with compositions by composers who influenced him and that he influenced.

Louis Couperin, both in essence and tribute, served as the opening and closing pillars of the program. Libeer commenced with his Pavane in F-sharp minor and concluded the late afternoon musicale with Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. The stately pavane of Louis Couperin, uncle of Francois Couperin, was assayed with plaintive spaciousness and rounded tone by Libeer. His stylish realization was firmly rooted in the stylistic aura of the French Baroque rather than Bachian paths.

Ravel’s Sonatine is a miniature gem that conjures up all the elements of the composer’s impressionism and melodic inspiration. In three movements lasting a mere twelve minutes, all the elements of Ravel’s musical paint kit are present. With light flurries across the keyboard and a broadly varied palette of dynamics, Libeer made the initial Modéré sing. The Minuet abounded in dance-like Gallic graciousness. There was more heft in the rippling figures of the closing Animé but, while he can summon power when called for, Liber prefers to weave myriad colors and shadings from the instrument.

In the first of the Valses Nobles et sentimentales, Libeer vividly painted in virtuosic hues Ravel’s portrait of a ballroom through a tinted gauze. The Assaz lent sounded almost like a French chanson under Libeer’s sensitive fingers. He vividly etched the suggestions of Ravel’s La valse (composed eight years later) in the Assaz animé section. The penultimate Moins vif seemed almost like an impromptu, as if Libeer were conceiving the notes as he played. A dreamy and elegant finale, wrapped in crystalline tonal sonority, was capped by a soft and gentle final chord.

Without pause, Libeer launched into two songs by George Gershwin in the composer’s own piano transcriptions. Ravel and Gershwin met and socialized during the French composer’s American concert tour in the 1920’s, and it is fair to say that both composers influenced each other. “The Man I Love” emerged rhapsodic with touches of Chopin and Rachmaninoff. Starting at a moderate tempo, “I Got Rhythm” was spun ever faster, culminating in a dizzying whirlwind of notes.

George Crumb was one of America’s most original and distinctive composers. Although regarded as an avant-gardist, he was not captive to the academic dogmas of the Darmstadt school and its best known exponents Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In its quirky sound painting, Crumb’s seven- movement A Little Suite for Christmas is a modern update of Debussy and Ravel.

Opening figures give way to the player striking the instrument’s strings in typical Crumb fashion for the tolling of the bells in “The Visitation.” Throughout the nearly twenty-minute suite, Crumb’s nativity celebration is full of surprises, including melodies slipping through the dense texture. At times strumming the strings, Libeer proved fully attuned to Crumb’s unique sound world, capturing the mystery and quasi-jazzy charm of “The Adoration of the Magi.” Middle Eastern and Oriental hues were audible in Crumb’s vision of a “Nativity Dance.” The final “Carol of the Bells” was both captivating and baffling, a potent example of its composer’s unique contribution to American music. Libeer deserves credit for programming the work of this American maverick.

Again, without pause, the pianist went right into the opening bars of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. The score does not quote any melodies by Couperin. Rather, Ravel pays homage to the keyboard dance suites of the Baroque era with each movement in a different dance form.

Most often heard in the later orchestral guise, the original solo piano version, premiered in 1919, includes two movements that Ravel omitted in his orchestration. The composer was also paying tribute to seven of his friends and colleagues who perished in the tumultuous battles of World War I.

Libeer took the Prélude Vif at a rapid pace but each note was transparent and well placed. The final flourishes descended into stillness and silence. In a distinctive interpretive thread, Libeer summoned a bluesy touch to the Forlane. There was a plethora of vigor in the Rigaudon but Libeer displayed a more languid approach to the central section, almost like classical lounge music. An aristocratic Minuet served as a prelude to Libeer’s tour de force rendition of the concluding  Toccata, played with visceral strength and rhythmic zeal. The performance was a fine summation of this gifted pianist’s strengths—a protean, flawless technique mixed with personal and insightful musicianship

Repeated curtain calls brought Libeer back for more Ravel. He noted that he began with a pavane (by Couperin) so he would close with one by Ravel—the Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess). Libeer’s pearly articulation, lyrical flow and continuity of shaping lines were exceptional, refreshing this familiar music.

‍