Pianist Murray Perahia to perform at Green Music Center

To call pianist Murray Perahia a poet of the piano would seem too much and, at the same time, too little.

Surely this self-effacing superstar would demur and protest, in his typically dry, witty manner. After all, when asked about what he would like his legacy to be, he politely dodged the hubris-filled question.

“I’m just enjoying being able to play,” he said in a phone interview. “And I just want to do more of it.”

Yet if anyone deserves superlatives, it is this American musician, born in the Bronx in 1947 to a family of Sephardic Jews who immigrated from Greece. Along with a discography six-feet deep and a string of Grammy and Gramophone Awards, Perahia has garnered a raft of international honors, starting with first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1972. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and just last week, Juilliard announced that he will receive an honorary degree this year.

Perahia will kick off his latest U.S. tour at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall with a recital that spans the joyful buoyancy of Bach and Haydn, the serious depths of Beethoven and Cesar Franck, and the virtuosic heights of Frederic Chopin. The tour ends at Carnegie Hall in April.

Those who are fans of the pianist know better than anyone that his music speaks for itself. And it is not a stretch to say that among local pianists and classical music lovers, Perahia’s premier appearance at the Green Music Center this weekend is one of the most anticipated events of the classical music season in Sonoma County.

Now 68, Perahia started playing the piano at age 4, then went on to attend the Mannes College in New York City, where he studied keyboard, conducting and composition with Mieczyslaw Horszowski. But it was the summers spent at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont that left a deep impression on the budding pianist, who met musical giants such as pianist Rudolf Serkin and cellist Pablo Casals.

“Those were important influences,” he said. “I think it was their humanity that I admired. Their ability to get in touch with the emotions... and their simplicity and lack of ego.”

Despite struggling through a series of intermittent injuries starting in the early 1990s, Perahia returned full-time to performance in 2008 and has continued to present concerts all over the world. He serves as principal guest conductor of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and president of the Jerusalem Music Center (an educational institute). He also edits new editions of piano works by Chopin, Schubert and Beethoven.

We caught up with the peripatetic Perahia at his home in London, where he has lived with his wife for the past 30 years.

Q: How did you end up living in London?

A: One of the real attractions at that time were a number of great musicians who were here, starting with (composer) Benjamin Britten, who I worked with, and (tenor) Peter Pears, who I accompanied for five years. I also played with the Amadeus Quartet .. Gradually, the more time I spent, the more I felt I wanted to live here.

Q: How do you prepare yourself for a concert?

A: I practice in the morning for two or three hours, and then I try to rest in the afternoon and not think about the concert. But I can’t ever quite sleep.

Q: How does the audience help a performance?

A: The audience does give you a lot during the performance. Somehow you can bounce off ideas. (Composer Feraccio) Busoni once said, “If you would interview every one of the people in the audience, some are bright, some not so bright, and many are average, but the audience as a whole is a genius.”

Q: You’ve talked about exploring the “mystery” of the piano. What does that mean?

A: Unlike string players, we don’t have a bow so we can’t sustain a sound... We have to use illusions to make it sing. That’s really the art of the piano, to make it sing... It’s done with the pedal, with the arm weight and all aspects of playing.

Q: You are known for the clarity and beauty of your tone. How do you create that?

A: I don’t work directly at the tone. I work obliquely at it, in that I try to get the phrasing, how this is connected to that. The long phrases... how many bars, and how does it connect to the next phrase? Then you want to get what the harmonic goals are. How is it modulating? Is it deceiving you, is it going in the right direction? Music is a language, and that’s why I value counterpoint and harmony. That takes you to the root of the language.

Q: How did you put together this recital program?

A: I love all of the different composers, and I also like contrast, so I chose things like the Beethoven (Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-Flat Major) which is a mature work about separation and the departure of the Archduke Rudolf (Beethoven’s patron) and how Beethoven came to terms with it. That’s a deep subject, so I wanted to balance it with the Haydn piece, which is deep but very jovial and jolly. The Bach (French Suite No. 6 in E major) is a happy piece, too.

In the second half, the Franck (Prelude, Choral et Fugue) is a religious piece with a lot of doubt, especially in the Fugue, because the keys are always shifting. But the Choral is contrasted with that, and it’s very blessed in a way, and tonally secure as well. So it’s the contrast of those two states of mind that is the important thing. The Chopin (Scherzo No. 1 in b minor) is a very effective piece as well.

Q: Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?

A: I feel that somehow spirituality is an important concern, especially for musicians, because you can’t think of Bach’s music without its spiritual message. You don’t have to buy it, but once you’re in the piece, you have to emotionally sympathize with it and understand it... I don’t always subscribe to it necessarily, but it’s unquestionably very important for music. It’s underestimated.

Q: Many critics have referred to you as a classicist. But you have said you feel closer to romanticism.

A: I always felt like a romantic, but it apparently didn’t come out. I think everybody is somehow a romantic. Nobody feels like they sit in the formal cookie jar. Everybody feels like they have impulses beyond the expected. And the most important thing is communicating emotion.

What fascinates me in the classical composers is that everything is connected, so that there is an organic quality to the music that doesn’t exist in the romantics. The romantics like the spur-of-the-moment thing and don’t want to be tied to organizing it. But the magic of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven is that every note is part of the bigger picture. Every note belongs.

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com