Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Scaramouche op. 165b
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Capriccio (d’après La bal masqué) (1952)
Sonata for Four Hands (1918 rev.1939)
Élègie for two pianos (1959)
Sonata for Two Pianos (1952-1953)
L’embarquement pour Cythère (1951)
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Three Nocturnes (1899, arr. Ravel for two pianos)
Charles Owen, Katya Apekisheva (pianos)
rec. 2021/2022, Cobham, UK
Orchid Classics ORC100270 [70]
Recitals and recordings of two piano music are much rarer than those for piano duet – i.e. four hands on one instrument. The reasons are easy to see; you need two perfectly matched grands, which is an expensive and space-greedy business. But when it can happen, the results are potentially thrilling, as they are here, with these two superb musicians playing on a pair of Steinway Model Ds in the warm acoustic of the Menuhin Hall at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey.
Charles Owen and his partner Katya Apekisheva each have burgeoning solo careers and ever-growing reputations, so we should be thankful that they have made time to put together this demanding but outstandingly enjoyable disc. They begin with Milhaud’s mischievous Scaramouche, one of the great favourites of this repertoire. The piece suffers, in some hands, from being thrown off carelessly and disrespectfully; not here, for these two bring out its best characteristics, finding great beauties in the middle movement while enjoying all the fun to the full.
There follows a sequence of Poulenc works, starting with his own arrangement of the Capriccio from what Julian Haylock, in his excellent booklet notes calls Poulenc’s ‘dazzlingly surreal cantata’, Le bal masqué. This is where the programme of this disc is so cunningly designed; the Capriccio is close to the madcap spirit of Scaramouche, and that playfulness is continued in the early Sonata for Four Hands.
But then the mood changes for the thoughtful yet ravishing Élègie of 1959, one of his last works, and composed as a tribute to the memory of the wonderful Princess de Polignac – aka Winnaretta Singer of the sewing machine family, patron of the arts, and someone who had given Poulenc so much encouragement and support in his early days. The reflective mood darkens for the often disturbing Sonata for Two Pianos, a true masterpiece from the early ‘50s. The dissonant, percussive chimes of the opening Prologue recur throughout the piece, and remind us how impressed Poulenc had been with the Balinese Gamelan Orchestra he heard at the Exposition Coloniale de Paris in 1931. There is a sense of both disillusionment and resolution in the slow waltz that then forms the main part of the movement.
The frantic Allegro molto seems to burst from the fetters of the Prologue, but it cannot escape from the underlying sense of terror and even panic. The beautiful Andantino lyrico finds a certain calm, though not peace, and once more the two pianists respond imaginatively to the music’s ambivalence. The Epilogue draws together the threads of the previous movements, and underlines the sense of harsh reality and profound regret.
To Debussy for the final tracks of this wonderful disc, and here is another revelation. His Three Nocturnes of the 1890sare amongst the great orchestral masterpieces of that era. They were arranged for two pianos in 1910 by Maurice Ravel, with the assistance of Raoul Bardac, Debussy’s stepson. This is especially interesting, being the reverse of the process we find Ravel going through with Mussorgsky’s Picture at an Exhibition, or his own Une barque sur l’océan, where he has transcribed piano music for orchestra. Yet as in those cases, Ravel’s exceptional sense of timbre means that these Nocturnes have been re-imagined, and as a result live a new life – even Sirènes, shorn of its choir of female voices.
This is playing and interpretation of the very highest calibre from Owen and Apekisheva, a disc to treasure. And a word for the recording team who have captured it all so perfectly.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
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