Over the past five years or so, I’ve spoken time and again with the hugely gifted pianist Christopher O’Riley. He’s easygoing and smart, and enjoys discussing the popular National Public Radio show that he hosts, “From the Top.” A weekly showcase for some of the most talented young classical musicians in the nation, it is broadcast on 250 stations (including KDFC-FM, 102.1, 7 p.m. Sundays), reaching an audience estimated at more than 700,000.

O’Riley also loves to talk about his No. 1 obsession of recent years: the band Radiohead, a favorite of many classical musicians. Trouble is, O’Riley’s public profile as radio host and Radiohead lover has sometimes obscured the fact that he is also a piano recitalist of the first rank, one who routinely delves into core repertory. He has devoted most of his career to performing the works of Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Schumann and others — including Beethoven.

Now, here’s your chance to witness O’Riley’s talents as a Beethoven interpreter: Saturday at San Jose State University, he will give an all-Beethoven recital, performing a pair of monumental works, the Diabelli Variations and the late-period Sonata in C minor, Op. 111. He is coming at the invitation of the American Beethoven Society, which brings a leading Beethoven interpreter to San Jose State each year. Richard Goode, Garrick Ohlsson, Anton Kuerti and Angela Hewitt have performed in the past.

Saturday, O’Riley joins the list: “And Chris’s Beethoven is like no one else’s,” says William Meredith, director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State, the event’s co-sponsor. (The concert is a benefit for the center’s fund for acquiring new manuscripts, first editions and other Beethoveniana.) “He carries you away from banal everyday life into a wide-open creative musical space.

“I say this as a Beethoven scholar,” Meredith continues. “Chris transforms the experience into one in which you feel you’re listening to Beethoven improvise right in front of you. That was exactly the impression I had in Detroit last year, when I heard him play the last sonata, Op. 111. As the second movement gets more and more improvisatory and goes off into new worlds, Chris, as cliched as it sounds, seemed to be channeling Beethoven into life.”

Born in 1956 and raised outside Chicago, O’Riley won awards at the Leeds, Van Cliburn and other major competitions early in his career. His first recording, in 1983, was devoted to works by Ferruccio Busoni, and it wasn’t long before he was on to Gershwin (“Rhapsody in Blue” with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and Scriabin.

In recent years, he has performed and recorded his transcriptions of songs by Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, even Nirvana — and, of course, Radiohead. In a conversation two years ago — before performing a recital of Radiohead and Shostakovich at Stanford — he told me that he had more than 100 Radiohead concerts on his iPod, and he explained the group’s appeal to so many classical and jazz musicians.

He described Radiohead as “a very contrapuntal — not a wall-of-undifferentiated-sound — band, and the weave of material that makes each song unique, and bears the stamp of each member of the band integrally, makes their music more interesting to more cultivated musicians.”

Then he explained some of the backdrop to his 2008 Stanford recital, arguing that “both Radiohead and Shostakovich had a great commonality in their innovative grasp of irony in music. Shostakovich, writing within the oppressive Stalinist framework, became the first serious composer to, by necessity, master the art of sub rosa expression — irony in music. Likewise, Radiohead’s songs, like ‘No Surprises,’ for instance, pit suicidally tinged lyrics against a pretty musical backdrop — again, irony in music.”

Meredith, for his part, wonders if O’Riley’s background as a Beethoven interpreter prepared him for Radiohead: “Maybe playing the world’s most popular classical composer prepared him for all the Radiohead re-enactments. Whether it’s classical or popular music, the same deep connection to the original sources comes through clear as a bell.”

Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069.