Musical Mavericks - August 2022 - Maria Luisa

Maria Luisa - Piano recital

Musical Mavericks is a monthly review blog which aims to write about musicians who stand out from the rest
Marisa Luisa certainly falls into this category. A Spanish native, Maria came to London in 2016, studying piano and composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and quickly establishing herself as a young musician with a distinct identity.

A recent masters graduate of the Royal Academy of Music (with distinction), Maria has gained a reputation as a performer with a difference; a maverick - performing her own compositions and those of other living composers as well as established piano repertoire.

I caught up with Maria Luisa at the RAM in London. Opening with her own piece ‘Watching the Rain’, this evocative piece made a strong statement. This was a pianist who wasn’t going to try and ‘wow’, but instead invite you into their world - and Maria’s world as a composer is a highly personal one.

At times magical in its innocence and other times almost eerie in its suggestion of the ethereal, the programme choice was excellent. Maria’s affinity with a sense of the personal swapped over to her beautiful and empathic interpretations of the music of Mompou; peppering the recital in intervals with three sections of the composer’s work ‘Musica Callada’.

Control, texture and with a sense of pace; the recital in every way was a heavy weight one and like a prize fight, the energy has to come in bursts at the right time. Prokofiev’s Sonata in Dm was tackled in a way that measured the pianist’s own intelligence with a highly expressive and at times a powerhouse of a performance. Polite and even gentle in her concert manner, hearing ff played with such power, the heavy weight contender came to mind again.

The title of living composer Mikey Parson’s Pants trilogy half way though the programme suggested a potential programming risk. Contemporary pieces that are trying to be funny, often end up just being trying for an audience; but this work was one of the most pleasant surprises and sucker punches of the programme. Composed during the lockdown, and about the difficulties of motivation while society lived in a state of limbo, Maria captured the spirit of this piece. Angst filled and sometimes sheer stir crazy in its harmonic language. Maria showed an eccentricity and gregariousness in her playing, that confirmed to me that this young lady is a music force to be reckoned with.

The programme closed with Poulenc’s Suite Napoli. It was the perfect change of direction. With its use of the lower register, expensive phrasing and at times romantic in its language, Maria Luisa today set a marker for things to come.