Javier Perianes / BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo EDVARD GRIEG Piano Concerto - Lyric Pieces

Javier Perianes’s account of Grieg’s Piano Concerto was recorded live at London’s Barbican last October, at the end of a BBCSO tour. And it is an interpretation into which soloist and orchestra seem, gratifyingly, to have grown together. In the first movement, Sakari Oramo leads the orchestra off at a tempo that seems rather steady, but which leaves space for some careful phrasing: once the main theme gets to Perianes, it sounds almost like a statement and then a comment, rather than a single entity. Somehow, Oramo and Perianes make this sound interesting rather than fussy, and the romantic expansiveness that marks their interpretation overall is tempered by playing from both pianist and orchestra that is as crisp and highly charged as one could want. Paired with this is a selection of 12 of the solo Lyric Pieces, recorded in the studio, all individually characterised but reaffirming Perianes’s warm, spacious approach to Grieg’s music. (Erica Jeal / The Guardian)