A piano recital highlighting the poetic chops of pianist Jonathan Biss

At first, it sounded as if Jonathan Biss had more technique than poetry in his arsenal. The pianist opened his recital at the Wolf Trap Barns in Vienna, Va., on Friday with a performance of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457, that was very fast, very determined and not very shapely, the sort of reading one could expect from someone much younger and inexperienced. But what he followed up with, a searching, thoughtful exploration of Schoenberg's "Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke," Op. 19, r...