Javier Perianes

[Helene]

I heard Javier Perianes tonight in an all-Chopin program (except the last encore, unless Chopin wrote an exercise in sounding like Mozart/Beethoven/Haydn).

If you have a chance to hear him, please go: his Chopin reflects a unique sensibility. It's not what you'd hear at "Dances at a Gathering", because his tempi often wouldn't work for dance, but the crystalline playing in the upper register was celestial, and he used the mid-range voices in the piano that many pianists gloss over. It was like hearing cellos and mezzos, particularly in the last piece on the program.

For this all-Chopin concert that Vancouver Recital Society Artistic Director Leila Getz requested, Perianes played the Nocturnes in C minor, Op. 48 no.1 and in F sharp minor, Op. 48 no. 2, the Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60, and the Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52 in the first half, and Mazurkas in A minor, Op. 17 no.4, in C major, Op. 24, no. 2, in C sharp minor, Op. 63 no. 3, and in A minor, Op. 67 no 4 and the Sonata No. 4 in B minor, Op. 58. For his first encore, he played my favorite piece by Chopin, the Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op. Post., which he dedicated to Getz.