This recital celebrated the musical tradition binding together four great composers while also revealing their ability for innovation. Murray Perahia demonstrated the imagination and technique to embrace their individual styles.
In Bach’s Partita No.1 in B flat each dance section was lovingly shaped but never cosseted. In the final gigue Bach takes off his wig and has some fun. His perky little tune demands nifty fingering, dextrous keyboard runs and elaborate cross-hand playing, all neatly despatched by Perahia.
Mozart’s Sonata in F major K332 is a real bag of tricks. The opening Allegro is as changeable as the English weather: it begins with blue skies but in a blink we are tumbling through minor keys into a musical storm.
Perahia is a superb Mozartian and this performance showed why: revealing pathos not sentimentality, restraint but not stiffness. The shifting moods of the finale were shown in high relief especially Mozart’s final joke, in the style of his beloved Haydn, where the player seems to be seeking for a final dramatic loud cadence, only to end quietly without a flourish.
Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata ends disconcertingly as well, accelerating like a rocket into a new theme played presto. We know its coming but the great performers convince us that we are hearing it for the first time – which is what Perahia did. Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Handel was his homage to the musical tradition to which he wanted to belong. Perahia’s performance imbued the fugue’s concluding notes with the feeling of returning home.
