A good crowd turned out to hear the piano recital given at Dolgellau Music Club by Amiri Harewood in Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor on 30 May.

Amiri studies at the Royal College of Music under Danny Driver, and the Countess of Munster Trust is to be thanked for supporting both young artists at the start of their promising careers, and for sponsoring this concert.

Amiri's programme was creatively planned, with a lighter first half balancing the weight of Brahms's 3rd Piano Sonata in the second. His choice to play the first-half pieces in reverse chronological order was imaginative – Shostakovitch, Granados, Bach. Shostakovitch's Prelude and Fugue Op. 87 No. 7 in A Major made an excellent opening number.

Dance was the inspiration for both Granados' Valses Poéticos and Bach's Partita No. 5 in G Major, BWV 829. Less well-known than his Goyescas of 1911, Granados' Valses Poéticos of the 1890s is a delightful set of eight short pieces with an Introduction and Coda, and the tempo markings indicate the variety of moods traversed – Melodioso, Tempo de Valse noble, Allegro umorístico, Allegretto elegante and so on. Amiri achieved all these contrasts beautifully, as he did the 'galanteries' (Bach's term) of the dances (such as allemande, sarabande, minuet and gigue) that make up the Partita. Positioned thus, Bach seemed as novel and exploratory as his historical successors, for example in writing a minuet in which 'two-time' seems to predominate. Amiri's accuracy and delicacy of touch in all this were remarkable (the double fugue of the Bach gigue has been described as 'finger-busting'), and set up great anticipation of the second half.

In the mighty Allegro maestoso that opens Brahms Sonata No. 3, Amiri showed himself to be as at home with heavy textures and sharp rhythms as he had been with filigee work in the first half. Across the work's five demanding movements his grasp and concentration never flagged, and listeners were confronted with a double wonder: a great work by a 20-year-old (Robert and Clara Schumann were astonished when he played it to them in 1853), performed by a 23-year-old with an expression of delight throughout which suggested that playing at this level (all from memory) was the most natural thing in the world! Thanks to Amiri, and again to his sponsors the Countess of Munster Trust, for an altogether uplifting and inspiring evening.