Given that he’s performed from the futuristic Harpa concert hall in Iceland to an opulent New Year’s celebration for the sultan of Oman, it’s clear American born pianist Andrew von Oeyen is at home amid opposites.

His latest album — Angels & Demons (Warner Classics) — is a perfect example of that sort of duality.

Its cover photo alone, worthy of a rockstar, is sure to draw a wider swath of listeners than an album of, say, Bach and Beethoven (which he’s also recorded).

There he sits, dressed in black, his faint smile inscrutable. Half his face is spot-lit and dominated by his piercing blue gaze, the other half skeletal and cast in shadow broken only by a beckoning swirl of mist. It’s no accident that the light half falls over the title’s “Angels” and the dark half over “Demons.”

This, his first concept album, began as a concept concert, which he feels is an ideal way to listen to his chosen pieces, from beginning to end in the order he presents, not skipping about on digital tracks.

And thus it comes to the Grand Piano Series.

“The Angels & Demons idea had been brewing for 10 to 15 years,” he said. “There have been so many great pieces written on the subject of heaven and hell, flesh and spirit, saint and sinner; it’s a very rich theme that deserves to be explored in a classical music concert. I’m surprised it hasn’t been done more often.”

Like the album, von Oeyen’s Grand Piano Series program promises a journey through the extremes of the human condition: good and evil, darkness and light. It brings together works of divine and demonic inspiration spanning 300 years from Bach to Messiaen.

Acclaimed for his elegant artistry and brilliant technique, von Oeyen has established himself as one of the most charismatic pianists of his generation. In the words of the Chicago Tribune, “He leaves you convinced that he can do absolutely anything he likes with a keyboard.”

In a promo video for the album (aptly taped while von Oeyen explores the Paris cemetery where both Frédéric Chopin and Jim Morrison are buried), he reflected, “This theme of dark and light, heaven and hell, flesh and spirit, is treated very differently by all these composers. We have some works that are deeply religious, some that are theatrical, others that are mystical, some pieces that suggest a very ascetic lifestyle and others a hedonistic life. There are pieces that are deadly serious and others that are whimsical and very light and playful.”

“Angels and demons do not always appear to us in the way we expect them to appear… Angels, which represent goodness and light and joy, sometimes instill fear, while demons, which represent darkness and evil, sometimes deliver joy and pleasure and ecstasy. Where are the points of convergence between the spiritual and the sensual? It’s at these points of convergence where music can be extremely powerful and, if you will, takes on its most divine form,” he said.

For example, said von Oeyen, the program’s Méditation from the opera Thaïs embodies the sensual but also the spiritual. This intermezzo, from an opera about all the different forms of love, comes at the point where the sensual courtesan Thaïs finds salvation, becoming almost angelic.

Both concert and album combine works for solo keyboard with piano transcriptions from operatic and choral repertoire. The concert balances a unique duality of “angelic” works by Bach, Massenet and Messiaen and “demonic” works by Edward MacDowell, Liszt and Saint-Saëns.

Von Oeyen is an assured and inspiring guide, leading the audience on a journey into the darkest corners of human emotion but also toward catharsis and rapture.

Angels & Demons: Andrew von Oeyen

When: 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, Mar. 26 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 27

Where: Ubben Signature Event Space, Artis—Naples, 5833 Pelican Bay Boulevard, Naples

Purchase tickets ($59) at grandpianoseries.org or artisnaples.org

For more information, call Grand Piano Series at 469-333-3231 or Artis— Naples at 239-597-1900