American pianist Alan Gampel, who has spent most of his career in Europe, is not one of those performers who just walks on stage, sits silently at the piano and runs through a slice of repertoire.

At a recital Saturday at the University of Miami’s Gusman Hall, he picked up the microphone before each work and provided an introduction, telling of Chopin’s miserable, rainy Mediterranean vacation during which he composed his Preludes and the story of 19th-century American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s trail of romantic conquests in South America. At the piano he was a bit of a showman —allowing his hands to rise high into the air after thumping fortissimo notes on the keyboard and ending works with a flourish that brought him off the piano bench.

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