Italian pianist Mauro Bertoli, who now teaches piano performance at Carleton University in Ottawa, gets a two-night residency at Gallery 345 in Parkdale. The two evenings are so different, that it may well be worth attending both.

Bertoli is a small guy who plays big. He has both technique and charisma to burn.

•On Wednesday (Nov. 23), Bertoli performs a solo program that ranges from Scarlatti to Granados, with hefty contributions from Schumann and Liszt

•On Thursday, Bertoli teams up with actor Kevin White to present Richard Strauss’ rarely-heard setting of Tennyson’s poem Enoch Arden (it was given a second wind when pianist Emanuel Ax and actor Patrick Stewart teamed up to make a recording four years ago).

Tickets run $10 to $20 for each performance. For all the details, click here.

(Bertoli and Kevin White repeat the Enoch Arden performace at the Gravenhurst Opera House on Saturday. Click here for details.)

To give you a taste of his assuredness, here is Bertoli firing up the keyboard with a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody (in an overly reverberant venue):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnRhGLbLHc8

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John Terauds

John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in 1988, was the classical music critic from 2005 to 2012, and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.

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