Javier Perianes (piano), BBCSO/Josep Pons Harmonia Mundi HMC 902099****

The piece by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla that you're most likely to hear on piano doesn't feature at all on this CD of his piano music. The Ritual Fire Danceis not an original piano work, but an arrangement from a ballet.

The big solo work here is the Fantasía baeticathat Falla wrote in 1919 for Arthur Rubinstein, a bony piece inclined to stridency, which Javier Perianes plays with real grit. He's fine, too, in the austere, late Pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas, and dreamier in his selection of earlier and lighter pieces. The performance of the atmospheric Nights in the Gardens of Spainis a tightly integrated one, Perianes working hand-in-glove with conductor Josep Pons, who paints Falla's highly individual orchestral colours and textures with beautiful brush strokes. See url.ie/55ay