International Piano Magazine

The cover of the December issue of International Piano features the Spanish pianist Javier Perianes, whose recording of Granados’s masterpiece Goyescas is out this month. Jessica Duchen talks him about the pleasures and the challenges of this colourful music, and about following in the footsteps of perhaps the greatest Spanish pianist of them all, Alicia de Larrocha.

In other features this month, Mark Ainley explores the legacy of a pianist whose recordings were almost lost to posterity, Jascha Spivakovsky; Bryce Morrison considers the playing of the Russian pianist Lazar Berman, whose virtuosity was legendary but whose playing still divided opinion; Peter J Rabinowitz offers a magisterial survey of the recorded history of Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op 1; Jeremy Nicholas offers a fascinating introduction to the life and music of Mel Bonis, a French composer whose reputation suffered a similar fate to many women who wrote music in the 19th and early 20th centuries; and Mark Viner explains why he thinks the music of Alkan is important and distinctive and introduces the latest volume in his survey of Alkan’s complete music for solo piano.

As always, there is more...