Music / Marcela Fiorillo, piano. At Wesley Uniting Church, November 16. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Argentinian-Australian pianist Marcela Fiorillo has been a proud representative of her home country’s culture since settling in the ACT some years ago, but there wasn’t a whiff of Argentina about this concert.

On the contrary, Fiorillo – well known for her performances of works by Argentina’s Astor Piazzolla and Ginastera – presented an intimate concert of great European piano classics for her admirers and the large group of piano pupils who had come to hear her, in a clear demonstration that she is mistress of the instrument’s most demanding repertoire.

Petite but fiery as a performer, Fiorillo nonetheless began calmly and quietly with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat major, BWV 867, from The Well-Tempered Clavier. This was followed by another highly controlled performance, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 (Pathétique).

But Fiorillo was biding her time.

A born teacher, she likes to reflect out loud on the background of the works she chooses, though without amplification not all her comments were easy to catch. What did come through was her reminder that piano playing – once, she said, a mainstay of at-home entertainment – was the equivalent of TV or computers today.

She also spoke of the extraordinary complexity of Chopin’s Ballade in F minor, Op. 52, which followed: its demands on the artist, and its inspiration in Polish poetry.

By now Fiorillo was fully fired up, moving into one of her favourite composers, Liszt. From Harmonies poétiques et religieuses came a gentle beginning that reached its ferocious apogee in Funérailles.

The recital ended with Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp major, Op. 30 by Scriabin, the once-controversial composer she noted had come close to being forgotten – though not any more. Before playing the two-part work, Fiorillo read part of his program-poem describing the mystery of the sea of light and the fusion of spirit and sound.

Concluding such a powerful concert with Scriabin’s extraordinary Prestissimo volando movement was a masterstroke.