Ten fingers on a piano keyboard can produce music of remarkable power, variety and complexity. But if you make it 20 fingers on one or two keyboards, the effect becomes much stronger; the music can take on a positively orchestral richness of texture. Two recent recordings provide good examples:
Mozart: The Complete Piano Works for Four Hands plus arrangements by Busoni & Grieg (Musical Heritage, three CDs). Mozart began composing piano four-hand music as a showcase for himself and his older sister, Nannerl, when he was only 9 and the family was on tour in London. That work, the Sonata in C, K. 19d, is playful and remarkably mature; Mozart was already on his way to becoming the most accomplished living composer, with the possible exception of Haydn.
Bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu's new CD is "Opera Arias."
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He continued to write for four hands on one keyboard at intervals until 1787, four years before his death, providing a good survey of how his style developed. It is not, however, enough music to fill three CDs, so in this collection, husband-and-wife pianists Misha and Cipa Dichter include several pieces that require some explanation.
Nobody is likely to complain about the inclusion of the great Sonata in D, K. 448, although it is usually played on two pianos.
The Sonata in C, K. 545, was written for one pianist, but the Dichters have discovered a revision by Edvard Grieg, which leaves the original as is but cleverly adds music for two more hands.
Finally, the Fantasia in F Minor, K. 608, written a year before Mozart's death, was originally for a mechanical organ operated by a clockwork mechanism. It was transcribed for two pianos by Ferrucio Busoni. Like all the music in this collection, it is witty, melodious and superbly polished. So is the Dichters' performance.
This set can be ordered at www.musicalheritage.com.
Brahms: Music for Two Pianos (Sony). Two of the composer's most popular works, the Piano Quintet in F Minor and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn, are brilliantly played in their two-piano versions by the all-star duo-piano team of Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman. Better known in their alternative embodiments as chamber music (the quintet) and orchestral music (the variations), these pieces take on a special vitality in the hands of these brilliant players.
Other notable recent recordings:
Tan Dun: Tea, A Mirror of Soul (Deutsche Grammophon DVD). Tan Dun occupies a position between modern western music and traditional practices of Japanese and Chinese musicians. This opera, based on a legend dating to the Tang Dynasty, tells the tragic story of a Japanese prince wooing a Chinese princess, his quarrel with her brother and her death trying to pacify them. It was taped at the premiere in Tokyo's Suntory Hall with the composer conducting.
Besides the usual resources of a western orchestra, he has at his disposal percussion including sounds produced by dripping water, rustling paper and struck ceramics. The style, suitably for a legend, blends ancient and modern techniques. The pace is often quite deliberate, but it builds to a striking climax, and its sinuous melodies gradually work their way deep into the listener's subconscious. It is sung in English, with subtitles.
Bach: Goldberg Variations; Haskell Small: 25 Preludes (4tay). It takes a certain . . . let's call it self-confidence . . . for a composer-performer to put his own work next to that of Johann Sebastian Bach. Washington musician Haskell Small has such confidence and, remarkably, this well-filled disc shows that he is justified. His Bach may not make you throw away your Glenn Gould version, but it is clean and bright, played with exemplary technique, poised musicianship and a clear sense of the distinctive qualities in each variation. His own miniature preludes sometimes call Bach to mind with dotted rhythms and touches of counterpoint, but many are uncompromisingly modern with jazz flavors, impressionistic nuances, crashing Rachmaninovian chords, virtuoso display and hints of dissonance. This disc is a delight from beginning to end, Small as well as Bach.
Veracini Sonatas (ECM New Series). Violinist-composer Francesco Maria Veracini is less familiar than Vivaldi but no less brilliant or historically important. Violinist John Holloway, cellist Jaap ter Linden and harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, three of Europe's most eminent players of period instruments, take full measure of his genius in four sonatas. Holloway has also written an interesting introductory essay.
Jonathan Lemalu: Opera Arias (EMI, with texts and translations). Lemalu, who has just made his Metropolitan Opera debut, is a young bass-baritone with none of the gruffness often heard in that vocal category. In this collection he performs smoothly and stylishly some of the favorite arias from the roles of Leporello, Papageno, Falstaff, Prince Gremin and Wagner's Flying Dutchman, among others.
Miklos Rozsa: Three Choral Suites (Telarc). These suites from "Ben-Hur," "Quo Vadis" and "King of Kings" sound as exactly what they are: big-screen, technicolor orchestral and choral soundtrack music. There is, however, impressive craftsmanship in the composition and the performance by Erich Kunzel, the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Telarc supplies no texts.
Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (San Francisco Symphony). There are plenty of big sounds in Mahler's last completed symphony, but the key element is subtlety of phrasing, balance and color nuances. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony do these elements full justice.
Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil (Harmonia Mundi, with text and translation). More than the piano prestidigitation that earned him a living, the soul of Sergei Rachmaninoff is shown in this music for the arrival of the Russian Orthodox Easter. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and conductor Paul Hillier are both skilled and reverent.
