The Joy of Four Hands on One Keyboard

courtesy of PIAS

Back in October of 2010, Hyperion released an album of performances of music by Franz Schubert for four hands on one keyboard, beginning with the vigorous D. 947 “Lebensstürme” (storms of life) in A minor and concluding with the monumental D. 940 fantasia in F minor. The performers constituted a “dynamic duo” of Paul Lewis and Steven Osborne. At the beginning of this month the dynamic duo returned to Hyperion, this time with an album entitled French Duets.

The recording features significant contributions to the four-hand repertoire by four leading French composers: Gabriel Fauré (the Opus 56 Dolly suite), Claude Debussy (Petite suite and the suite of six “épigraphes antiques”), Maurice Ravel (the Ma mère l’oye suite), and Francis Poulenc (a three-movement sonata). Igor Stravinsky is added to the mix with music he wrote while living in France entitled simply Three easy pieces. The booklet notes by Roger Nichols provide informative background for all six of these compositions.

However, what Nichols overlooks is the fundamental premise that supports the lion’s share of four-hand compositions, if not the entirety of the repertoire. That premise is the assertion that four-hand music is composed primarily for social occasions, rather than “concert settings.” Thus, the six selections on the Schubert album most likely were performed in Schubertiade settings, probably with the composer’s own participation. Similarly, the works included on French Duets tend to be better suited to a pair of friends getting together over a keyboard, regardless of whether there is a “listening audience” in the room.

To be fair, this is a claim I make based on personal experience. Over the course of my life, I have played all of the French Duets selections except for the Debussy “épigraphes.” I used to play the Poulenc with a fellow researcher in my earlier information technology career. After my retirement, I would get together with a neighbor in my building; and, over the course of our sessions, we took on the Petite suite and the Fauré and Ravel selections. I played the Stravinsky with my wife, and that deserves some background that Nichols failed to mention.

While he did note that Stravinsky played these pieces with Sergei Diaghilev in February of 1915 (almost two years after the ballet “The Rite of Spring” was first performed), Nichols overlooked the circumstances behind the composition of those three pieces. While Diaghilev was a masterful impresario, his skills as a performer were, to say the least, limited. As a result, he requested that Stravinsky compose something that the two of them could play, writing one of the parts as far less demanding than the other.

About twenty years ago, the Chief Executive Officer of the research laboratory where I was working liked to have “piano evenings” at his house. He knew of my background and always asked me to prepare something. On one occasion I told my wife about the Stravinsky piece and suggested that she could play the Diaghilev part. We had a lot of fun preparing the performance, and I think that our listeners got the joke behind the music!

Listening to this new Hyperion album, I had no trouble imagining the “social dimension” that brought Lewis and Osborne together over this repertoire. Mind you, I still feel that playing is more important than listening. However, as I reconcile myself to the fact that my dexterity is not what it used to be, listening to this album evokes a flood of pleasant reminders of past experiences.