CLASSICAL MUSIC / Without a break: Review: Adrian Jack finds Murray Perahia back on form in his London comeback

Not long ago, Murray Perahia thought he might have to change career. For nearly two years he was unable to play the piano because of a thumb infection. But he's been playing again since last August and on Wednesday gave his first London recital since recovery. If this was a tense occasion (it was being recorded by Radio 3), he gave no sign of nervousness. The programme was typical - absolutely mainstream classics by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin - and his mastery was beyond criticism.

He began with Bach's Partita No 2 in C minor, played with all the nuances and graceful fluency which the piano allows but also, in the opening Sinfonia, with a grand sonority and, in the closing Capriccio, a robust rhythmic bounce that had heads in the audience bobbing. He went on to Beethoven's very first Sonata, whose opening movement was not too stormy, but contained with an 18th-century neatness. The slow movement was not unduly pondered either, but kept on the move, and the Minuet twirled at a merry tempo. The finale whizzed by.

Then, to end the first half, two of Brahms' late pieces - the E flat minor Intermezzo from Op 118 (though the programme book announced a different piece), a bleak cry of desolation which ends by shaking a fist, and the robust Rhapsody in E flat from Op 119, muscular but brainy. Perahia's a great Brahmsian.

He's also one of the most comprehensive interpreters one could imagine of Chopin, and he had designed the second half of the recital as a continuous sequence - if only the audience had let him play it that way. The third Ballade, dominated by an easy rocking motion - though the waters stirred a bit, too - led into the slow, musing E major Study and its brilliant sequel in C sharp minor, both from the first set of Studies, Op 10. Then we got three Mazurkas - Perahia mimicking the vigorous thump of feet in Op 33 No 2, before the wistful poetry of Op 17 No 4 and the lively, though darkly coloured, F minor from Op 7.

By that time, the audience had got the message and allowed Perahia to melt into the Berceuse without a break. He took it just a fraction faster than on his finely spun recordings, tilting its hypnotic swaying motion a shade more decisively. In the G minor Ballade that ended the official programme there was a swagger which perhaps owed something to Perahia's contact with Horowitz in his latter days. Still, Perahia's own sense of balance and impeccable taste prevailed, though his right hand couldn't resist miming encouragement as the left undulated in the Revolutionary Study, packing us off well satisfied.