Javier Perianes displays exceptional musical mastery at Teatro Colón

Javier Perianes captivated audiences at the Teatro Colón with a program honoring Manuel de Falla's 150th birth anniversary. Organized by Mozarteum Argentino, the recital featured a thoughtful selection of works by Falla, Frédéric Chopin, and Isaac Albéniz.

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Thanks to Javier Perianes' exquisite touch, the succession of the first part (with some of the honoree's works elevated in their interpretive quality) unfolded in a climate of recollection and contemplation, as if the musician were evoking, in the crystal of nostalgia, each of the melodies, distant, serene, and dispassionate.

Perianes demonstrated exceptional conceptual clarity by pairing Falla's youthful compositions with those of Chopin in the first half. This dialogue, structured by form and rhythm, progressed from simpler to more complex pieces, including nocturnes, mazurkas, waltzes, serenades, and songs. The pianist's exquisite touch and imperturbable tempo created an atmosphere of quiet contemplation, evoking each melody with a serene, detached beauty. His performance was characterized by a firm yet soft left hand, a lyrical and flexible right hand, and a subtle dynamic range, particularly in the pianissimos, lending the music a sweet melancholy.

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What did that poetic calm bring to Perianes' interpretation? Above all, a strict and imperturbable tempo. A firm but soft left hand. A singing, plastic, and flexible right hand, without outbursts in phrasing or vulgar affectations in granting liberties. The impressionistic approach. An extraordinary dynamic range in the palette of pianos and pianissimos. And most decisively, the expression (a 'white expression' as Bruno Gelber describes that type of beauty, of suspended, idyllic, never visceral touch) and the subtly veiled color of the sound that tinges the discourse with sweetness and melancholy.

The second half shifted to a display of virtuosity and national color. Perianes presented Falla's "Cuatro Piezas españolas" with profound knowledge of their musical sources, rendering the rhythms and ornaments with freshness and authenticity. He concluded the program with a masterful selection of four pieces from Isaac Albéniz's "Iberia," a suite renowned for its immense technical demands. Perianes' authoritative and distinguished performance of these challenging works solidified his status as a leading interpreter of the piano repertoire.

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In the second part, virtuosity and national color in full. The Four Spanish Pieces by a superior Falla, Aragonesa, Cubana, Montañesa (Paysage), and Andaluza, , works where Perianes exhibited a deep knowledge of the musical sources.