Spanish pianist Javier Perianes brought postcards from Vienna and Granada to his New York recital debut at the Gilded Age Frick Collection mansion on 5th Avenue.
After growing up in Andalusia, Spain, Javier was always drawn to the beautiful capital city of Granada. As a pianist, he also has an affinity for Vienna and the music of Franz Schubert. In this New York recital debut, Perianes began with a piece of what we might call mature Schubert. As Perianes told us, Schubert died very young, "but there is a drama in the melodic sentences, it's quite profound and quite deep.”
Nearly 100 years after Schubert wrote his Klavierstucke, composer Claude Debussy was inspired by a postcard Manuel de Falla sent him from Grenada. Debussy wrote several works inspired by the Andalusian town, without even setting foot in southern Spain. Debussy wrote: "When you don't have any money to go on holiday, you must make do by using your imagination"
With music of Debussy, Manuel de Falla, and Isaac Albeniz, Javier Perianes explored different perspectives of the city of Grenada, which he called "a very magnetic and particular city.” His program closed with the Ritual Fire Dance from de Falla’s piano suite El Amor Brujo. And when the audience demanded more, Perianes brought one more bit of folklore into the Music Room of the Frick Collection: a Polish Mazurka by Frederic Chopin.
Program (listen to the audio above):
Franz Schubert: Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946
Claude Debussy: La Puerta del Vino (from Preludes, Book II)
Claude Debussy: La Sérénade Interrompue (from Preludes, Book I)
Manuel de Falla: Piano suite from El Amor Brujo
Frédéric Chopin: Mazurka, Op 17, No 4 (encore)
Bonus tracks:
Franz Schubert: Sonata in A Major, D. 664
Claude Debussy: La Soirée dans Grenade (from Estampes)
Isaac Albéniz: El Albayzin (from Suite Iberia)
