Hot on the heels of his admired performances of Beethoven’s Emperor with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony, American pianist Garrick Ohlsson treated the City Recital Hall audience to an engrossing programme of Granados and Mussorgsky. The Spaniard and the Russian my not appear obvious bedfellows, but scratch the surface and there are common themes, not least the fact that both Granados’ Goyescas and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition were directly inspired by paintings.

A big man who is able to call on the Herculean weight of both mighty hands, Ohlsson is a virtuoso of no mean prowess who gives every appearance of possessing at least a dozen fingers. He is also capable of great delicacy when required and his right hand/left hand balance is impeccable. Nowhere were the first of these skills better exhibited than in Mussorgsky’s heavyweight portraits such as his labouring Oxen and the ceremonial Great Gate of Kiev. The dainty touch was most evident in the shimmering colours of Granados’ perfumed ‘Majos in Love’ series.

The piano works of Enrique Granados strike us today as typically ‘Spanish’. Goyescas takes as its subject Goya’s idealised paintings of the Majos, a type of 18th-century gallants. The men strut and...