Music Reviews : Pianist Perry at USC

Appearances can be deceiving. John Perry’s dour demeanor seemed to indicate that the pianist wasn’t happy to be where he was Monday: in Hancock Auditorium at USC playing a faculty recital.

But Perry delivered, with intense concentration and no self-indulgent shtick. On the Steinway, his full-out forte was never harsh, his featheriest piano never evaporated. He was undaunted by the slipperiest bravura passages. And he is more than a little enigmatic as an artist.

Program bookends: two great C-minor sonatas, Mozart’s K. 457--perfectly articulated, hard-bitten, lacking ultimate grace--and Beethoven’s No. 32--superb from first note to last, its extraordinary architecture made cohesive.

Between these, Chopin’s opus-posthumous C-sharp-minor Nocturne (properly songful, it got the Mozartean touch), the premiere of Paul Cooper’s three-movement “Sinfonia for Solo Piano” (1989), Ravel’s Sonatine (crystalline, mercurial) and Schumann’s F-sharp Romanze (oddly ascetic).

Perry’s formidable stamina and elan sold the new Cooper piece as few could. It has structure, logic, impassioned outbursts and sense--though the episodic middle section, beginning with seemingly random chord clusters and detached soft passages, did meander.