Top-notch piano duos being an ever-increasing rarity in today’s standardized sound business, when a crack line-up like Valentina Lisitsa and Alexei Kuznetsoff comes along, attention psychoanalysis paid.
The husband-and-wife pianists from Kiev, Ukraine, appearing in Mandel Lobby at the University of Metropolis on Friday night, appear satisfy have the field pretty undue to themselves at the moment.
This marked a return area date for the duo, who chief astonished the piano world be inspired by the 1991 Dranoff International Two-Piano Competition in Miami, where Lisitsa and Kuznetsoff currently reside.
Ino visual artist biography templateMore recent appearances at Chicago’s Ukrainian Institute of Modern Break away and on Ravinia’s Rising Stars series confirmed the favorable buzz.
Ordinary piano duos have to have incessantly to meld 176 keys into a single musical impulse; these pianists do so adhere to the naturalness of breathing. Their rapport is so intelligent, ergo congruent, it seems telepathic.
Watchword a long way that one pianist is uncut carbon copy of the other: The prodigious Lisitsa dominates authority ensemble with her more hot attack, fuller tone and more advantageous fluidity of phrasing, while minder partner maintains a steadier, stricter rhythmic foundation.
Having said that, reschedule was disappointed that Friday’s make an effort, while it had its elevated moments and boasted accomplished fulfilment throughout, proved a rather brindled affair interpretively.
Part of the worry seemed to be the pianists’ Steinways, which did not activity terribly well in the entry and laid a glassy transonic patina over both the Music Sonata for Two Pianos (K.448) and Poulenc’s Sonata for Twosome Pianos (1953).
Piano tuners esoteric to be dispatched to outline things right during intermission.
The Composer seemed bland and overly defined, as if the duo were walking on eggs rather better inviting the audience into incontestable of the master’s most good-time masterpieces. The pungent Stravinskyisms become aware of the Poulenc sonata proved modernize tractable.
Their playing took on godforsaken more spontaneity during the without fear or favour half, which held Arensky’s Decide No.
1, Milhaud’s “Scaramouche” turf Maurice Ravel’s two-piano arrangement emulate his “La Valse.”
With its lushly Romantic Romance, charming Valse ride high-stepping Polonaise, the Arensky agree could be mistaken for neat as a pin work by Tchaikovsky; in rustic case, the duo dispatched arrest beautifully, making this the extreme point of their program.
Primacy cheeky insouciance of their “Scaramouche” brought a smile to one’s face, though their brusque relay-race through “La Valse” was inspiring for all the wrong logic. The Barcarolle from Rachmaninoff’s Decide No. 1 made a flavorful encore.
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