Javier Perianes’ recent piano recital at the City Recital Hall offered a rare exploration of Spanish piano music – including a fascinating late masterwork by Manuel de Falla.
Fantasia Baetica (1919) is a huge work in terms of its sound world, totally arresting in its clangourous summoning of that cultural blend of Moorish, flamenco, and modernist abstraction. Its blocks of sound - like dazzling mosaics – were built on repetition, subtly varied across the length of the piece. Dance, in all its fantastical appellations, drove this homage to Andalusia. Technically this piece is absolutely demanding. Perianes had the required heft, razor sharp placement of all the notes and the ability to respond to its whirling dynamic shifts. The middle section, bittersweet in its relative simplicity was executed with lively beauty.
It was piquant to hear so much of de Falla’s piano music in one sitting, though the homage to Debussy (“Le tombeau de Claude Debussy” - 1921) was originally written for guitar and then transcribed by de Falla, keeping its strumming rhythms intact.
The much earlier Serenade (Serenata andaluza – 1900) combines Moorish cantilena with frenzied dance repetitions that once more ululate a distinct sound world.
Within the subdued persona of the pianist - curt formal bows, and dark hooded eyes – the fingers unleashed a torrent of notes and a particular tang as though summoning the darker and graver muse that inhabits Spanish music – with all its wilful, outrageous, demonic elongation.
The scope of Granados’ Goyescas (Opus 11, 1911) is demanding for even the most spectacularly gifted pianists. Its sound world is both dreamy and threatening. Its lilting repetitions captivating but always with the slight flick of the devil’s tail. Its invention summons a dream world (a la Berlioz) of late romantic intensity, Lisztian in its roulades and quirky keyboard flights, but like de Falla deeply Iberian. Granados’ response to some of the lighter more playful paintings of Goya picks up on the piquancy and flirtatious echoing of lovers communing and fighting - but within the bright colours a piquant darkness lurks. As Granados said, he sought to capture ‘the whitish pink of the cheeks, contrasted with the blend of black velvet” and a bohemian sense of rapture.
The longest piece in this 50-minute tour de force is the darkest: “El Amore y la Muerte”. Here, love and death inexorably challenge each other to a duel. Perianes placed its dark heart of yearning and loss with clarity, rhythmic complexity, and summoning power.
The lament of the girl and the nightingale (“Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor”) was simply unfolded, though each repetition of the lovelorn sighs of the bird and the maiden was achingly sounded. The cadences of the fluttering finale let us feel and breathe the sweet nightingale – exhausted by its song of desire. This is the best-known piece of the work – and creates magic across its haunting bittersweet cadences.
Granados enfolds dance rhythms (Jota, Fandango) across Goyescas. This unleashes mercurial energy, always supported by the strumming of his guitar-like inflections. It is a unique work, truly intoxicating in the washes and surges of sound that invoke the melismas of human desire.
If Perianes didn’t always capture the nuanced lilt of these micro inflections, he did articulate the structure of each piece and ensured we heard every note and the flickering power that throbs beneath these flights of fancy – deeply, darkly playful, and erotic. Sometimes Wagner is glimpsed. The rich melancholy that Debussy discerned in such Spanish music is truly on display, for here are the upsurges and somersaults of highly ornate and passionate human utterances. Perianes might be a dour figure on stage, but he managed to unfold so much of this music’s structural integrity and intoxicating emotional intensity.
His two Debussy offerings were crisply phrased – both from the Book of Preludes - though the Serenade (“La Serenade interrompue”) lacked some of the inbuilt humour of the work’s interrupted invention. It was too well played, failing to capture the hesitant and forlorn pizzicatos that begin and end its span!
The sole piece from Iberia by Albeniz – “El Albaicin” was dazzling in its incantations and hedonistic surges across the keyboard. Perianes displayed significant keyboard alchemy in his performance.
For his encore, Perianes gave us a stark and monumental “Danza ritual del fuego” from El Amore Brujo – and then he was gone, enigmatic, like the music he had presented so impeccably.
International Pianists, Sydney Symphony Orchestra – City Recital Hall, Sydney, 31 July 2023
gar jones
Fantasia Baetica (1919) is a huge work in terms of its sound world, totally arresting in its clangourous summoning of that cultural blend of Moorish, flamenco, and modernist abstraction. Its blocks of sound - like dazzling mosaics – were built on repetition, subtly varied across the length of the piece. Dance, in all its fantastical appellations, drove this homage to Andalusia. Technically this piece is absolutely demanding. Perianes had the required heft, razor sharp placement of all the notes and the ability to respond to its whirling dynamic shifts. The middle section, bittersweet in its relative simplicity was executed with lively beauty.
It was piquant to hear so much of de Falla’s piano music in one sitting, though the homage to Debussy (“Le tombeau de Claude Debussy” - 1921) was originally written for guitar and then transcribed by de Falla, keeping its strumming rhythms intact.
The much earlier Serenade (Serenata andaluza – 1900) combines Moorish cantilena with frenzied dance repetitions that once more ululate a distinct sound world.
Within the subdued persona of the pianist - curt formal bows, and dark hooded eyes – the fingers unleashed a torrent of notes and a particular tang as though summoning the darker and graver muse that inhabits Spanish music – with all its wilful, outrageous, demonic elongation.
The scope of Granados’ Goyescas (Opus 11, 1911) is demanding for even the most spectacularly gifted pianists. Its sound world is both dreamy and threatening. Its lilting repetitions captivating but always with the slight flick of the devil’s tail. Its invention summons a dream world (a la Berlioz) of late romantic intensity, Lisztian in its roulades and quirky keyboard flights, but like de Falla deeply Iberian. Granados’ response to some of the lighter more playful paintings of Goya picks up on the piquancy and flirtatious echoing of lovers communing and fighting - but within the bright colours a piquant darkness lurks. As Granados said, he sought to capture ‘the whitish pink of the cheeks, contrasted with the blend of black velvet” and a bohemian sense of rapture.
The longest piece in this 50-minute tour de force is the darkest: “El Amore y la Muerte”. Here, love and death inexorably challenge each other to a duel. Perianes placed its dark heart of yearning and loss with clarity, rhythmic complexity, and summoning power.
The lament of the girl and the nightingale (“Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor”) was simply unfolded, though each repetition of the lovelorn sighs of the bird and the maiden was achingly sounded. The cadences of the fluttering finale let us feel and breathe the sweet nightingale – exhausted by its song of desire. This is the best-known piece of the work – and creates magic across its haunting bittersweet cadences.
Granados enfolds dance rhythms (Jota, Fandango) across Goyescas. This unleashes mercurial energy, always supported by the strumming of his guitar-like inflections. It is a unique work, truly intoxicating in the washes and surges of sound that invoke the melismas of human desire.
If Perianes didn’t always capture the nuanced lilt of these micro inflections, he did articulate the structure of each piece and ensured we heard every note and the flickering power that throbs beneath these flights of fancy – deeply, darkly playful, and erotic. Sometimes Wagner is glimpsed. The rich melancholy that Debussy discerned in such Spanish music is truly on display, for here are the upsurges and somersaults of highly ornate and passionate human utterances. Perianes might be a dour figure on stage, but he managed to unfold so much of this music’s structural integrity and intoxicating emotional intensity.
His two Debussy offerings were crisply phrased – both from the Book of Preludes - though the Serenade (“La Serenade interrompue”) lacked some of the inbuilt humour of the work’s interrupted invention. It was too well played, failing to capture the hesitant and forlorn pizzicatos that begin and end its span!
The sole piece from Iberia by Albeniz – “El Albaicin” was dazzling in its incantations and hedonistic surges across the keyboard. Perianes displayed significant keyboard alchemy in his performance.
For his encore, Perianes gave us a stark and monumental “Danza ritual del fuego” from El Amore Brujo – and then he was gone, enigmatic, like the music he had presented so impeccably.
International Pianists, Sydney Symphony Orchestra – City Recital Hall, Sydney, 31 July 2023
gar jones
