Performance "Strategy"

[dinosaurtales]

This is a question that has bugged me for ages.  It has to do with how a performer "plans" his whole recital.  I'll see if I can describe two examples of what I see:

1.  "fancy/famous" performer gives mediocre if not actually boring first half of recital  Second half picks up a bit, but still not what I would expect of this guy.  Last piece is a dazzler, and "wakes up" the audience, who claps like mad, and demands encore after encore.  The encores are stupendous!  The guy plays 3 at least. 

2. A different "fancy/famous" performer gives a knock-your-socks-off-with-beauty" performance.  Audience is exhausted afterwards and claps like mad.  Guy does a beautiful, simple encore and settles everybody down.  Then they all go home, and he has only done one encore.

I personally prefer the 2. performances - are these types of things planned?  The "2" type performances were done by Dubravka Tomsic and Louis Lortie, and they were astounding. The 1's are far more common. 

What do you guys think, those of you who put together recitals?

[tds]

if the description you provided is the typical performance of both recitalists, then i shall confidently say that no. 1 is what we call pianist, and no. 2 musician. programming can only do so much, yet it's the "brand" that sets the value.

[dinosaurtales]

Let me think of some sample performers I've seen recently: 

#1 type - Yefim Bronfman, Richard Goode, others I can't even remember their names - see how memorable those were?

#2 types:  Louis Lortie, Alfred Brendel, Dubrafka Tomsic, Krystian Zimmerman 

i apologize if my spelling sucks.