Peter Miyamoto, who won the first Gilmore Festival Young Artist award back in 1990, is a faculty member at the University of Missouri Music School and frequently gives master classes throughout the United States. The pianist’s marvelous all-Schubert release for Blue Griffin made me curious about the present recital, which turns out to be a hit-and-miss affair.
Miyamoto begins Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy gingerly and without much sense of the music’s improvisatory impetus, yet delivers a clear and well-structured performance of the Fugue. Linear clarity also informs Miyamoto’s Berg Sonata, although he tends to overshoot the faster tempo modifications and to telegraph climaxes. If the pianist doesn’t unleash the Beethoven Op. 109 middle movement to the composer’s Prestissimo specification, his heartfelt lyricism in the third-movement variations compensate. In particular, he gives unusual left-hand attention to Variation 5’s knotty counterpoint.
Miyamoto plays Ravel’s Jeux d’eau very well, and also takes Chopin’s tempo and phrasing indications in the Third Scherzo on faith. Yet the latter ultimately lacks the dynamism, daring, and litheness one hears from Rubinstein, Argerich, Richter, and Hough, or even from Benjamin Grosvenor and Yundi Li. Miyamoto provides his own concise, excellently written annotations, and Blue Griffin’s sonics have appreciable warmth and presence.
