New York Times music critic Bernard Holland offers no small praise for pianist Paul Lewis’s emulative performance of Mozart and Schubert at the Y on Saturday:

Critics trying to deal with the idea of musical interpretation might keep in the back of their minds what Isaac Babel said, that “if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” Something similar drew me admiringly to Paul Lewis’s evening of piano music at the 92nd Street Y on Saturday.

Listening to Mozart and Schubert was like listening to Mozart and Schubert, not like observing a man deciding how Mozart and Schubert should be played. Seemingly eliminated was the performer as middleman, as the wholesaler who takes goods from the composer’s warehouse and dresses them up for public consumption. Mr. Lewis is more “factory to you,” as the old cut-rate advertisements used to say.

Masters of the Keyboard subscriptions—featuring Hélène Grimaud, Garrick Ohlsson, Peter Serkin and Shai Wosner—for the 2008-09 Concert Season are now on sale.