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concert review: two pianos, no waiting
Oct. 8th, 2005 10:29 pmAfter Shabbat Shuvah services on Friday, which I like to attend because it's the annual dedication of new plaques on the memorial wall, I ducked out for something more secular, a concert of music for two pianos.
I may have heard this combination once before, if that, but if so it was a lot time ago. Two pianos are like two twelve-string guitars: a lot more cluttered-sounding than any lesser combination, certainly more so than four-hand piano music, because there's nothing to prevent the two pianists from hogging the same section of the keyboard.
The pianists, two Stanford piano professors, both male (see next paragraph), were energetic but not always together as they traversed Brahms's gigantic Sonata in F Minor and Rachmaninoff's smaller, sweeter Suite No. 2. The Brahms sonata was an earlier draft of what's beter-known as his Quintet for Piano and Strings, a favorite work of mine but one which I'd never heard in this alternate version. It works better as a quintet, but there are some interesting moments of canon and counterpoint. One pianist plays a melody heading up the scale as the other plays one heading down.
At the end of the concert, a graphic demonstration of why you should never give men flowers. A little girl came onstage to give both pianists bouquets, they each put them down on the floor to play an encore, and both promptly forgot to take them when they left.
I may have heard this combination once before, if that, but if so it was a lot time ago. Two pianos are like two twelve-string guitars: a lot more cluttered-sounding than any lesser combination, certainly more so than four-hand piano music, because there's nothing to prevent the two pianists from hogging the same section of the keyboard.
The pianists, two Stanford piano professors, both male (see next paragraph), were energetic but not always together as they traversed Brahms's gigantic Sonata in F Minor and Rachmaninoff's smaller, sweeter Suite No. 2. The Brahms sonata was an earlier draft of what's beter-known as his Quintet for Piano and Strings, a favorite work of mine but one which I'd never heard in this alternate version. It works better as a quintet, but there are some interesting moments of canon and counterpoint. One pianist plays a melody heading up the scale as the other plays one heading down.
At the end of the concert, a graphic demonstration of why you should never give men flowers. A little girl came onstage to give both pianists bouquets, they each put them down on the floor to play an encore, and both promptly forgot to take them when they left.
