Pianist Benabdallah brings natural skill, and inventive staging, to the Phillips

It's probably a good idea to get out of Marouan Benabdallah's way when he sits down to play Bartok. The young Moroccan pianist has a powerful, even ferocious technique, and -- as he proved at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon -- takes an almost palpable joy in the driving rhythms and biting, aggressive harmonies of Bartok's music. The whole first half of the program, in fact, was devoted to the Hungarian composer, from five of the edgy-but-beguiling "Mikrokosmos" etudes (played with in...