Elegant, Superb Chopin Playing
J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 01/06/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I'd never heard of Peter Miyamoto before, but experience tells me that there are many superior pianists out there that we've never heard of. They keep cropping up everywhere one looks. Peter Miyamoto is a former Gilmore Young Artist and is on the faculty at CalArts. He holds degrees from Curtis (B.M.), Yale (M.M. and A.D.), Michigan State (D.M.A.), and London's Royal Academy of Music (A.D.). His teachers have included Maria Curcio-Diamand, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Aube Tzerko, and Ralph Votapek. Quite a pedigree, I'd say. But of course that doesn't guarantee he's a good pianist. Have no fear, though: this young man not only has technique to burn, he also has a musical soul. The four ballades, for instance, often call forth barn-storming technical glitz from lesser pianists, especially with those storms of emotion that come seemingly out of the blue here and there throughout these stalwarts of the literature. Miyamoto, instead, emphasizes the poetry, the elegant melancholy and the sheer musicality of these works; consequently his interpretrations are gentler than some, but they seem infinitely nuanced as he coaxes unfailingly gorgeous tone from his piano. These are interpretations that remind me, if I had to choose, of those by Moravec or perhaps Perahia, no small compliment. But he is also his own man. This is particularly evident in his handling of rubato. One is aware of his molding of intra-bar tempo fluctuations and yet even as one remarks on it to oneself it nonetheless, while noticeable, always seems inevitable and right. That is the mark of a really fine musician, one who is a cut above mere technicians. I'm very impressed.
The two other works on this CD are the Fantasie, Op. 49, and the Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 61. The same sort of deeply thought-about approach is apparent throughout.
This recording comes from Blue Griffin, an outfit in Lansing, Michigan and the sound and engineering are first-rate.
A definite recommendation.
Scott Morrison
"
Track Listings (6) - Disc #1