Spanish pianist Javier Perianes is well known to record collectors. For Harmonia Mundi he has recorded much of the Spanish repertoire, notably Mompou’s Musica Callada and works by Manuel de Falla, some of which appeared on this program.

His repertoire is considerably wider – from 2–5 August, he will play Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – but those of us lucky enough to attend his recital at Angel Place tonight got to enjoy great Spanish and Hispanic-flavoured music that we too rarely hear in concert.

Javier Perianes. Photo supplied

The program was cleverly conceived to show, in the first half, the influence of both Debussy and Albéniz on Manuel de Falla.

Perianes’ recital began and ended with the music of de Falla: the early Serenata andaluza (1900), and two late works in Falla’s piano output: Homenaje “Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy” (1920: a melancholy habañera, transcribed by Falla from his guitar original), and the fiendishly challenging Fantasia Baetica (1919) composed for Arthur Rubinstein, who refused to play it.

In Falla’s music, Perianes steered a middle ground between the dry, flamenco-style attack of the great Alicia de Larrocha and the...