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Gramophone Magazine, April 2009
Blue Griffin is a high-quality young label, the brainchild of Sergei Kvitko, who came to the US from Russia to get a degree a t Michigan State University. After studying with Ralph Votapek, Kvitko embarked on a series of entrepreneurial activities including engineer, producer, pianist, composer and organist that led to Blue Griffin. If the choice of the mythical half-eagle half-lion beast as the label's logo signifies Kvitko's pride in his heritage (in Russia the griffin is a highly visible signifier of mystical power), it is well chosen.
The thoughtful sequencing of the programme itself tells you a great deal about San Francisco-born Peter Miyamoto, who in 1990 was one of the first Gilmore Young Artist Award winners. He bookends the light-hearted, casually beautiful Sonata in A major with transcriptions by Franz Liszt of two of Schubert's most poignant songs about love and death. After infusing himself into the heart of the recital, Schubert's four emotionally conflicted Impromptus, D935, Miyamoto finishes with the sad, lonely musings of the Allegretto in C minor.
Throughout, he uses a velvet touch and luminous clarity to illuminate the music. In Miyamoto's hands, for example, the transcriptions are not merely brilliant, effervescent cascades of homogenised sound; instead they clearly differentiate between the singer and the song. His ability to brush upwards through a slow melody and leave a trailing wake of harmonically decaying musical stardust is another example of the deeply personal attention he pays to emotional context.
This highly desirable release will sound excellent on a wide range of systems, its superb acoustics balm for both tweeters and woofers. The pianist's liner-notes, like his playing, are long-lined and welcoming.
Laurence Vittes
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