Ventura Music Festival artistic director Nuvi Mehta had it just right when he said Saturday's concert was destined to create "an illusion that pianists have four hands."

Giuseppe Albanese, a 29-year-old Italian keyboard artist who made his West Coast debut at last year's festival, had his hands full with a program of some of the most demanding pieces in piano literature: Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata, Schubert's "Wanderer" Fantasie, Chopin's Polonaise-fantasie in A-flat Major and Liszt's "Reminiscences de Norma."

In his "What's the Score?" comments preceding the concert at Ventura Missionary Church, Mehta described each work as a major challenge, with Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin well able to master their own keyboard creations while Schubert left his Fantasie for others to perform.

Albanese was more than fit for the occasion, beginning with the Beethoven sonata that inspired the Appassionata! theme of the 14th Ventura Music Festival.

It reflects the turbulence in the composer's life as he came to grips with the disastrous news that his hearing, so central to his life's work, was fading fast when he was just 35.

The soloist wrenched every iota of passion, power and character out of the work with a technical facility that seems organic.

Combined in Beethoven's supreme sonata and the other works of the evening were more arpeggios, rapid-fire octaves, trills and scales — more total notes — than most audiences will ever hear at one piano concert.

But the young Italian has more than fleet fingers. He also has a well-honed musicality that captures the relative buoyancy and melodic profusion of Schubert's "Wanderer," the Polish themes and rhythms so elegantly summoned by Chopin and the bravura style of Liszt.

Finger-tingling prowess aside, Albanese is equally capable of a softer touch. There are eye-catching mannerisms that some may find distracting, almost at times a hand ballet above the keys, but no one would fault such exquisite moments as when his hands slide over the keys, then perch above before falling for a precise, bell-like final chord in Polonaise-fantasie.

Albanese returned after repeated deep bows, hand over heart, to grant the rapturous audience one small, graceful encore: Nocturne for the Left Hand by Scriabin, proving that not only can two hands sound like four, but one hand can disguise itself as two.

Kicking off the first weekend of the festival were Friday night's trio of sextets by Concertante, six solo-quality string players who have garnered distinctions individually and as a group, ably presenting works by Richard Strauss, Dvorak and Brahms; the first Tea & Trumpets, featuring the ever-popular Festival Brass Quintet on Friday afternoon; the outdoor international flavor of Pink Martini served up Sunday afternoon on the Ventura College campus; and the estimable developing talents of "Rising Stars" pianist Sara Daneshpour and guitarist Gonzalo Arias Contreras on Monday night at First United Methodist Church.

The festival continues tonight at 7:30 with violinist Leila Josefowicz performing works by Brahms, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Tuur and Schubert in Community Presbyterian Church, preceded by Nuvi Mehta's "What's the Score?" at 6:55.

— E-mail Rita Moran at ritamoran@earthlink.net.