Rachmaninov: Œuvres pour piano

Album review

With this seventh album for Mirare—the sixth being his Ibéria by Albéniz released in August 2020, was a reworking of his Verso version which came out in the mid-2000s—Madrid pianist Luis Fernando Pérez tackles the music of Russia, specifically Moments musicaux, Op. 16 and a selection of four preludes from Op. 23 augmented by the famous Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2.

Rachmaninov's music has few champions who take care to really bring out its polyphonic and harmonic density. Pérez grabs the keyboard close, embracing it: it radiates harmonies, registers explode, and there is a dazzling precision in the attacks—an impressive signature talent of his. So, yes, the tempos will seem rather restrained to some (as, for example, in the Andante cantabile, Op. 16 No. 3), but no one else can so fully render the rich polyphonic fabric that Sergei Rachmaninov deploys in these eleven pieces.

The programme's opening, the Andantino, the first and most difficult number of the Moments musicaux, Op. 16, immediately sets the tone; this is not going to be a virtuoso, spectacular or demonstrative Rachmaninov. With an almost imperturbable regularity of tempo and an admirable sense for song (throughout the second part, with its garlands of sixteenths), Luis Fernando Pérez wants above all to reveal, under his Spanish sun, the composer's dark lyricism, his tragic and resigned dramatism, expressed through piano alone. This is thrilling and deserves a listen right away. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz