Unable to be present at the Royal College for the live performance I was glad that Pedro had anticipated his performances a few days before in a private try out performance in my home.Beautiful playing from a great artist and the one or two comments that I could not make before such an important event I am glad to add now afterwards from far off Italy . All best wishes to this young artist on the crest of a wave

Mozart Sonata K.330 of refined good taste and delicate tone palette .A way of using his musically informed embellishments to enhance the grace and style of Mozart’s perfection without disturbing the simple beauty of aristocratic poise and elegance. The ornaments of the opening were enticing and beguiling whereas that of the last movement left me a little perplexed .Not the grace and beguiling charm of the movement,though, that was always full of the operatic characters that are so much part of Mozart’s world. A slow movement of refined beauty where his extraordinary sensitivity to sound for me would have been enough as the modern piano can sing in a way that Mozart’s keyboard instruments could not if not helped by improvised embellishments to add colour and emotion where touch was not yet an option. Of course it is always the human voice that is uppermost in Mozart’s mind as it is in Pedro’s and his extraordinary way of allowing the music to speak shows a musician who actually listens to himself and as I often quote Cherkassky :’je sens ,je joue ,je trasmets’. Here it could not have been more poignantly described – to ornament or not is a debatable matter but to allow the music to sing is not!

There was a searing red hot intensity to the De Falla ‘Fantasia Baetica’ with an extraordinary sense of line and architectural shape in a work that the dedicatee Artur Rubinstein complained was too long – it certainly did not seem like that in Pedro’s hands today! There was a brooding undercurrent of animal drive and in the melodic episodes a smoky decadence as they were played with a kaleidoscope of colours with mysterious passionate desires always just under the surface about to erupt. Glissandi that were mere streams of sounds like a masculine stroke of the guitar with passionate indifference. Wonderfully soulful recitativi doubled at the octave as they wailed and cried with animal longing. A pounding insistence always of a cauldron of burning emotions that was exactly a portrait of De Falla’s friend Rubinstein who actually complained that he found the work too long- perhaps he meant too lifelike!

The Chopin Sonata op 35 in B flat minor received a masterly performance but strangely the first movement seemed rather sectionalised and not the same architectural shape of searing intensity that he brought to the other three movements. An introduction that seemed rather too slow and divorced from what follows. A doppio movimento that was rather hurried instead of an internal intensity. A second subject of sublime beauty but did not seem to grow out of the organic material of this masterly constructed work.The development suddenly found all the pieces coming together with extraordinary musicianship and poignancy as the opening introduction suddenly appeared in the bass with menacing insistence. Pedro’s playing of the coda showed a masterly control with his mature passion not allowing Chopin’s accelerando indication to seemed hurried or matter of fact but on the contrary of aristocratic nobility allowing him to place the final chord with breathtaking courage.The Scherzo was played with passion and control with the ravishing beauty of the central episode played with beguiling shape and a style of great elasticity and sensitivity without disturbing it’s pulse or poignant beauty.There was a remarkable architectural shape – that had been missing in the first movement- without ever losing the passion and poignancy of this remarkable movement. Even the final two strokes in the bass over a long held chord were strokes of genius and played as such with great maturity and authority.There was an infectious rhythmic lilt to the bass of the Funeral March as the melodic line unfolded with nobility and measured beauty all of a line even at it’s most passionate with left hand trills a mere vibration of pent up emotion.There was sublime whispered beauty to the Trio played with a true bel canto and an innate flexibility almost at the limit of it’s natural emotional expanse.On the edge of our seats as we were drawn into the magic this poet was whispering in our ears and occasionally underlining such sublime beauty with jewels that glittered in the left hand as the light from his magic prism just shone so unexpectedly with these breathtaking glimpses of a paradise found. The last movement were just washes of sound – wailing indeed and it was with a stream of agitated sounds rising and falling almost imperceptibly until suddenly on the horizon a deep pulsating line could be felt throbbing in it’s midst in this wailing cauldron of obsessive insistence . A transcendental control and poetic sensibility were united as they were brought to a close with nobility and aristocratic authority.This was undoubtedly one of the finest performances I have ever heard of Chopin’s greatest masterpiece.

Pedro Lopez Salas at the National Liberal Club with aristocratic style and artistry