Juan Pérez Floristán plays de Falla and Liszt

The Programme

For composers of the Romantic era, Spain was as much a land of fantasy as of real life – a half-imagined world of heady perfumes and untamed passions. Ravel pictured a fairy-tale past, Debussy played games with light and shade, and Liszt cut loose with a wild fiesta for solo piano. But native Spanish composers told a different story: showpieces by de Falla and Turina add their own depth to this colourful picture.

The Performers

It’s an ideal programme for the superb young Spanish pianist Juan Pérez Floristán, who first came to fame in the 2015 Santander Piano Competition, and who includes Daniel Barenboim and Menahem Pressler among his mentors. ‘But, sooner or later, the South always ends up calling all its children‘, he says; and as a native of Seville he offers a very personal perspective on the music of Spain.