A classical pianist walks into eight bars …

If you think there is a punchline,  the chaconne is on you.

Actually, it was the “Chaconne in G minor” by Thomaso Antonio Vitali and the pianist was Dominic Cheli in his return performance after two years away to San Miguel de Allende on Friday night at St. Paul’s Church.

A chaconne uses a repetitive bass line – in this case eight bars – that is repeated continuously under other instruments, a popular 18th-century music format. Vitali wrote this one for violin. As Cheli observed before sitting down to the grand piano, the eight-bar refrain is repeated more than 50 times in this 15-minute composition.

Here’s the key takeaway, Cheli transcribed the music for piano himself and debuted it last night for the ProMusica audience. And it was stunning. As the progressions built and waned in intensity, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

Dominic Cheli walks onto the stage in youthful casual – khaki slacks, an untucked powder blue shirt, buckled brown loafers. This is my kind of concert pianist.

At 31, Cheli is part of a younger generation of classical musicians who put their energy into performance rather than persona. Like his good friend cellist Alexander Hersh who performs next week, Cheli relates deeply to the audience, taking the time to set up every piece with personal anecdotes, historical notes, context. They don’t just perform for you, they take you on a journey.

Cheli is a powerful performer who sways and leans intently into the piano as if squeezing every bit of inspiration out of each key before attacking the next note. The drama is wholly contained in the music, not the body language of the performer.

And Vitali’s Chaconne wasn’t the only one in the program on which the 31-year-old Cheli has left his mark.

The first half of the concert ended with a lyrically visual performance of the “Much Ado About Nothing Suite” by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an Austrian-Jewish refugee who came to Hollywood in the mid-1930s. In Germany and Austria, he was revered as a child-prodigy and became a professor at the prestigious Vienna Academy at nearly the same age as Cheli is today.

Like so many, he fled Germany ahead of the Nazis and went to work for director Max Reinhardt. His steady stream of commissions kept him from returning to Germany in the late 1930s and, as Cheli noted, almost certainly saved his life. 

Korngold wrote swashbuckler scores for Errol Flynn thrillers like “Captain Blood” and “Robin Hood,” for which he earned his second Oscar. (His first was for “Anthony Adverse” in 1936. And he earned two other nominations.)

Korngold completed highly regarded scores for 16 movies among many other compositions outside of film music.

What he didn’t complete was “Much Ado.” 

Perhaps it was the gaping hole in the five movements, the one called “Garden Scene,” that captivated Cheli, perhaps it was the evocative and visual aspect of Korngold’s music, for whatever reason, Cheli sought permission from Korngold’s granddaughter to finish it.

In the scene, Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into a garden encounter in which they ultimately discover and confess their love for each other. Classic Shakespeare stuff. Cheli’s contribution is a delicious romantic intrigue that inspires the imagination. Like a Disney “Fantasia,” you can almost see butterflies and bees flitting from his fingertips to swirl around the daffodils and roses erupting around the piano. (The same is true of the scene titled “Masquerade.” I swear Harlequins were dancing around the stage.)

Cheli is fearless in the way he selects pieces that may or not have their roots in piano. Take the composition “Asturias” by Isaac Albeniz for example. Cheli almost gleefully points out that it is “the perfect flamenco piece for a famous guitarist” though it was written exclusively for guitar.

I think the idea that Maurice Ravel titled the gently contemplative “Pavane pour un infante defunte” (Pavane for a Dead Princess) as such was, as Ravel said, “I just like those words” appeals to Cheli’s own sensibilities. Real or not, as you listen to Cheli play, the thought arises that this is a princess would have liked to have met.

But that is Ravel’s music for you, isn’t it? It fills in the life you missed out on while you were busy doing other things, all those gentle bits you ran over with your ambitions and obsessions. Ravel makes you whole, a salve for the broken soul.

In the second half, Cheli bookended another of his personal arrangements with two wildly different jazz compositions.

At the front was an insanely fast piano sonata by Australian Carl Vine that was allegedly commissioned by a dance company. I’ve heard of composers who showed their disdain for musicians by cramming truckloads of impossible notes into their work, but what choreographer could tackle Vine’s manic romp? I could almost hear the curse words after rehearsals. For a sedentary listener, however, buckle up we’re in for a bumpy ride.

While catching our breath, Cheli slipped into something soothing and comfortable, his arrangement of Beethoven’s “An Die Hoffnung” originally composed for voice and piano. This may be the recurrent theme for our times, translated as “To Hope.” It is such uplifting melodies and variations that we must cling to in clearly dark days ahead.

And the finish, like a bright sorbet – George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.” Just the thing to send the audience out of wings of euphoria. An extraordinary night.

Cheli will perform an entirely different and even more adventurous program on Sunday at 5 p.m. in St. Paul’s. It will include “16 Waltzes” by Brahms, “Masques” by Debussy, “12 Valses Nobles” by Schubert, 5 Pittoresken from Erwin Schulhoff, and “Dante Sonata,” by Franz List.

Tickets run $650, $450, and $300 pesos for the St. Paul’s Church concert. For tickets go to www.promusicasma.org. If any are available, you can walk up the night of the concert.

Postscript: I had the pleasure of sitting up in the balcony of St. Paul’s with Jim and Sharon Westby, ProMusica sponsors of the Cheli weekend. Not only are they underwriting the program, they flew from California, rented a villa for themselves and Cheli and his partner, and paid for the villa’s entire staff to attend the performance.

You might say they are Cheli superfans. They have known the pianist since he was a student and attended many of his performances, including Carnegie Hall. He’s even spent holidays at their home in Santa Barbara. They are like adoring parents, proudly noting that Cheli also runs Ironman triathlons.

Most sponsors would angle for cushioned seats, front and center. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that they chose the balcony seats. Pro tip: the balcony seats are the least expensive, and provide the best sight lines and acoustics.