Pianist Javier Perianes elicits charm, control and elegance, says Michael Church
INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE
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Granados
Goyescas, Op. 11
Javier Perianes (piano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM902626 64:56 mins
With Goyescas, Granados hoped to help create a new form of Spanish art music, and the work did just that. Claire Fraysse’s liner note to this superb album helpfully expands the context, explaining how Goya’s paintings inspired the composer. The majos and majas were young people from working-class districts of late- 18th-century Madrid, ‘whose principal attributes were their elegant garb, courteous manners, provocative charm, and romantic ardour’.
When these modes and manners also became adopted by the upper classes, majismo became a marker for national identity.
Granados’s palette ranges from the punteo guitar effect to echoes of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, and the styles he employs include the satirical tonadilla, the theatrical jacara and fandango dances and Valencian folk song. And in this deeply pondered account, Javier Perianes catches the flavour of all these modes.
He brings grace and elegance to the opening number ‘Los requiebros’ (The Compliments). This is followed by a delicately shaded ‘Coloquio en la reja’, a persuasive conversation in which his characters seem to have all the time in the world to achieve their sensual goal. Perianes lets several of the numbers start with a slow burn, and he gives plenty of space in which the ornamentation can flower. His fine control of dynamics allows him to simultaneously suggest both intimacy and distant perspectives. And the dainty musical portrait he creates of El pelele (The Straw Manikin) has all the charm of the painted rustic scene. He’s quoted as saying he felt nervous about invading the territory of his great compatriot Alicia de Larrocha, but this recording shows he needn’t have worried.
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
JS Bach
Cello Suites Nos 3 & 4
Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cello)
Alpha Classics ALPHA1009 56:33 mins
Bach’s six years as director of music at Prince Leopold’s court at Cöthen between 1717 and 1723 saw him produce some of the Baroque era’s finest instrumental music. In the case of the Suites for solo cello – along with the Sonatas and Partitas f
