Music Reviews : Pianist John Perry Shines at El Camino

Most pianists manage, in various ways subtle and not so, to show off in one way or another, flaunting their perfection of technique, their sincerity of emotion or penetrating intellect. John Perry is a pianist who doesn’t show off at all, who seems to want nothing more than to communicate the music.

One of this country’s most sought after pedagogues, the USC professor made a rare recital appearance Saturday night at El Camino College, offering illuminating and always engaging performances of an astutely varied program.

In the two Scarlatti sonatas, K. 380 and K. 264, which opened the concert in Marsee Auditorium, Perry sought singing line and emotional nuance over mechanical display. His gentle, soft-spoken reading of K. 264, rendered its fanfare figures from a distance, as a remembrance, not a depiction, of an event.

His performances of Schubert’s Opus 90 Impromptus were marked by his refusal both to needlessly aggrandize the rhetoric and to dawdle over detail. Yet, these proved wondrously pointed and polished readings nevertheless, with a wide array of touch, color and tempo used in the service of highlighting emotional and harmonic plateaus on the way to single dramatic peaks.

Similarly, in Chopin’s B-minor Sonata, Perry projected the grand design, capturing the breadth of an entire musical paragraph with taut but pliant phrasing. The Nocturne, Opus Posthumous, and the Mazurka, Opus 59, No. 2 emerged more relaxed, elegant and easygoing in their expression, and richly hued.

A rarity rounded out the program: American composer Donald Keats’ Piano Sonata (1960), a tightly crafted essay in Hindemithian counterpoint and muscular bravura. Its combination of learnedness with blustering energy proved fascinating to hear, and Perry played it with gusto.

In encore, the pianist offered Chopin’s Opus 44 Polonaise, Ravel’s ‘Ondine’ and a Rachmaninoff Melodie, adding stamina to his list of many virtues.