“Music for Two Pianos” – DEBUSSY: En blanc et noir; Jeux; Lindaraja; RAVEL: Entre cloches; Rapsodie espagnole; La Valse – Vladimir & Vovka Ashkenazy – Decca “Piano Duets” – ANTON LISTE: Grande Sonate (4 hands); HONEGGER: Pastorale d’eté; HANS SCHAEUBLE: Los Caprichos; FRANK MARTIN: Pavane couleur du temps – See Siang Wong & Hans Adolfsen – Guild

by | Apr 14, 2012 | Classical CD Reviews

“Music for Two Pianos” – DEBUSSY: En blanc et noir; Jeux; Lindaraja; RAVEL: Entre cloches; Rapsodie espagnole; La Valse – Vladimir & Vovka Ashkenazy – Decca 478 1090, 66:04 *****:
“Piano Duets” – ANTON LISTE: Grande Sonate (4 hands); HONEGGER: Pastorale d’eté; HANS SCHAEUBLE: Los Caprichos (suite choreographique); FRANK MARTIN: Pavane couleur du temps – See Siang Wong & Hans Adolfsen – Guild GMCD7370, 68:74 [Distr. by Albany] *****:
The first of these two CDs same out in 2009, but I was so entranced by the father & son duo’s recent Russian Fantasy release that I had to also hear and review their earlier inscription. (In addition they have a third album, dating from 2002, of Rachmaninoff piano transcriptions.)
There were many pieces for piano duet or 4-Hands back before the phonograph and radio, but the ones for two pianos were a specialized thing, often intended to make available to a larger public the details of various orchestral works. Though Debussy was a bit slow in writing for or converting any of his works to the two piano form, Ravel frequently did it, even sometimes creating a new orchestral work as a two-piano original and then orchestrating it. However, both composers were such original masters of piano music that a two-piano recital devoted to their works was a natural.
En blanc et noir is Debussy’s masterpiece for two pianos and was originally written for that format. Written in 1915, its first two movements are affected by the First World War which was then in progress. Jeux is the composer’s orchestral ballet score which involved tennis players.  Debussy provided a solo piano score of it for the dancers rehearsals, but never got around to doing a two-piano version—which Jean-Efflam Bavouzet remedied. The third Debussy two-piano work is one of the several successful Spanish-flavored works created by French composers. It is named after a patio in Granada’s Alhambra. The short work has the rhythms of Spanish dance.
First of the three Ravel pieces is one of his two Sites auriculaires; as both the title and the music itself indicates, Ravel was influenced by Erik Satie at this time. The Rapsodie espagnole was originally composed as a two-piano work, but one of the pianists complained loudly that it was too difficult to play, so Ravel also orchestrated it. The closing work, and one of the most amazing in piano literature, is Ravel’s La Valse, which he originally wrote for two pianos and again later orchestrated. He also wrote a solo piano transcription, but it doesn’t have the firepower of this two-piano version. According to one music writer, the piece “plots the birth, decay and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz.”
The two pianos are perfectly spaced acoustically; some recordings have them too nested, with little separation on the two channels. (I like to listen to two-piano recordings on headphones for even more separation.)
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The four composers and works of the Piano Duets CD all have a connection to Switzerland. The duet Sonata by German composer Liste used the same publisher in Zurich as did Beethoven. He became friends with the publisher and eventually was director of the Zurich Musical Society Orchestra. Its three movements lean more toward Haydn than Beethoven.
Honegger was raised in Paris by Swiss parents, but he loved walking in the Swiss Alps.  In fact his short work here is a sound portrait of the Alps above Berne. Hans Schaeuble (who lived until 1988) was born in Switzerland to German parents, and was pulled between the two countries all his life. He had some problems after WWII with accusations that he had been too pro-German during the war. As another composer influenced by things Spanish, he wrote a ballet in the early 1950s based on images by Goya called Los Caprichos. He later created his own version for two pianos, heard here. Its seven movements are mostly in various Spanish dance forms. The closing composer, Frank Martin, is of course entirely Swiss and he did many different versions of his short Pavane, including one for two pianos. It is a meditation upon the ancient slow dance style.
Tracklist – Ashkenazys:
DEBUSSY: En blanc et noir; Jeux; Lindaraja; RAVEL: Entre cloches; Rapsodie espagnole, La Valse
TrackList – Piano Duets:
LISTE: Grande Sonate; HONEGGER: Pastorale d’eté; SCHAEUBLE: Les Caprichos; MARTIN: Pavane couleur du temps

 —John Sunier
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