Spna & Benignetti Archive

BRAHMS: Sonata in f minor for 2 Pianos; Variations on a Theme by Haydn – Eleonora Spina & Michele Benignetti, pianos – Brilliant Classics

by Audiophile Audition | Mar 12, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

BRAHMS: Sonata in f minor for Two Pianos, Op. 34b; Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56b – Eleonora Spina & Michele Benignetti, pianos – Brilliant Classics 94956, 60:22 (7/31/15) [Distr. by Naxos] ****: Two of the Brahms orchestral works have their alternate egos realized in glowing terms on two pianos. This first disc in a projected complete series of Brahms’s duo-piano works, all to be recorded by the young Italian musicians Eleonora Spina and Michele Benignetti; this pairing of two-piano arrangements of larger scores derives from sessions 24-25 July 2014. Brahms in 1871 had already worked his 1864 Two-Piano Sonata from a string quintet, only to have had both Joachim and Clara Schumann declare that its form suited neither medium satisfactorily. The task of composing his first symphony lay ahead, and several of the motifs of the first movement would find heir way into that long-delayed work. But rather than destroy the Sonata, Brahms went forward with this publication, dedicating the score to Princess Anna of Hesse. Brahms would then settle for a hybrid of his former ideas, the Piano Quintet, Op. 34, as a fit medium for its weighty, symphonic conception. The opening Allegro non troppo gravitates […]