That's clearly among the reasons that she's the hottest classical pianist of her generation right now. The 30-year-old from the heel of Italy's boot is getting raves worldwide, and it's easy to understand why after experiencing her Sunday afternoon recital, which closed the Schubert Club International Artist Series season. She's a marvelously expressive interpreter with a keen sense of how to get to the emotional heart of a work.

Rana's delivery is smooth as silk, even when the music calls for her to aggressively hammer out chords. And the fluidity of her playing makes her a tremendously enjoyable artist to watch, each note meticulously placed, no matter how breakneck the tempo. In short, it was a triumphant performance at St. Paul's Ordway Music Theater, one that inspired eight bows, two encores and multiple standing ovations.

Sunday's late-afternoon matinee began with J.S. Bach's French Suite No. 2. Starting with a studied Allemande, Rana showed that to be merely the setup for an explosive second movement, a Courante that was fast and passionate, sounding the product of a very busy mind, but not the least bit cluttered.

The pianist's quest for contrast came through again with an ensuing Sarabande that was the quintessence of quiet introspection and an Air that seemed like an animated exchange between her left and right hands, musical ideas echoed and debated. And Rana's ability to summon up thunder came through in both a Menuet of many moods and a rustic Gigue.

Even more satisfying was an interpretation of Claude Debussy's "Pour le Piano" that demonstrated a clear understanding of what can make that composer's music so magical. Rana brought to the piece an impressive blend of subtlety, intensity and a touch of playfulness.

She showed that she could make even the sparest soundscapes emotionally expressive, as evidenced by the haunting beauty of the work's slow movement. And her control was astounding on the finale, her left hand all power while her right hand danced delicately across the keys of a new Schubert Club Steinway making its maiden voyage.

Even the most accomplished pianists can be whipped into a frenzied intensity when tackling Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata, his 29th. Written around the same time as his glorious Ninth Symphony, it's the work of an artist relentlessly pushing musical boundaries. Some excellent pianists have sweated buckets while playing it.

But Rana remained the embodiment of gracefulness and fluidity, even when the music was at its most thunderous and complex. She found the humor inside the Scherzo and brought a haunting, hypnotic quality to the slow movement, suffusing it with what sounded like a combination of calm acceptance and a lingering longing, its final funereal tones dissolving in a weighty quiet.

If any in the audience weren't yet convinced of Rana's technical brilliance, surely the finale of the "Hammerklavier" sealed the argument. Beethoven's closing three-voiced fugue could be described with the film title, "Everything Everywhere All at Once," and Rana's lithe yet powerful hands were all over the keyboard, articulating ideas that escape most mere mortals.

The resulting standing ovation inspired a pair of encores, the first a sweet take on Camille Saint-Saëns' "The Swan" from "The Carnival of the Animals," her last a hyperkinetic eight-fingered etude by Debussy that demonstrated that Rana can make exceptional music, even when taking her thumbs out of the equation.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.