Word: perahia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
America's poet of the piano plays 15 of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte (literally, Songs Without Words), plus eight Bach-Busoni and Schubert-Liszt transcriptions. The hand injury that threatened to sideline Perahia only a few short years ago is now nothing but a fast-fading memory: the poise and lyricism of the exquisite playing heard on this meltingly beautiful CD are worthy of comparison with any of the century's greatest pianists. His tone is warm and inviting, his interpretations quietly romantic. Vladimir Horowitz--who once gave Perahia a few pointers--would have reveled in the results...
...Murray Perahia's stock is rising. A Sony CD set commemorating 25 years of concertizing has sold especially well, and recent releases of Bach English Suites are also going fast. If he used to be on the short list of pianists, he is now on the short-short list. Last Wednesday the BankBoston Celebrity Series did well to host him at Symphony Hall where his foolproof program of old Austro-German masters brought the house down. Perahia opened with a lesser-known Bach English Suite, the fifth, in E minor, S. 810. The Prelude was full of crisp slides...
Next of the program was the Beethoven F major Sonata from Op. 10--in my opinion, Perahia's strongest performance of the night. This piece has enormous innate appeal, but certainly does not play itself and Perahia made it dazzling. Perahia imparted to the main theme of the allegretto middle movement the proper sense of graceful ghostliness, and played the living daylights out of the trio, but the real jawdropper here was the presto rondo finale. In an interview with WHRB, Perahia revealed that, studying under Miecyslaw Horszowski, he practiced his Leschetisky method like a good little boy. Nowhere...
There followed a "Moonlight" Sonata that sounded, in the honest estimation of one concertgoer, like Perahia "had to go to the bathroom." This rendition was hasty and short on detail, but Perahia wisely observed the printed note values for the dotted first theme, which these days tends to degenerate into rubato soup. The capital offenses were in the finale, where often his left hand growled indistinctly or pounded an ostinato where it should have been a more sensitive accompanist, and once he even wandered into a thicket of wrong notes. It made one grateful and Perahia did not have access...
...second half of the recital comprised Perahia's magisterial reading of the Schubert C Minor Sonata D. 958. This interpretation was worlds away from the famous hair-sizzling live recording made in Budapest in 1958 (coincidence?) by Sviatoslav Richter-The tempi were less "hell" and more "high water." The beginning of the first movement, phrased to remind us of Beethoven's 32 variations in the same key was the first of many well-executed musical decisions that kept the audience rapt for the entirety of this very long sonata. Peheria was rewarded with three encores...