Alexandre Tharaud: Four Hands (Instrumental Choice – July 2024)
In his review, Michael Church is charmed by this joyful collection of lost treasures for piano four hands performed by Alexandre Tharaud and friends...
Four Hands
Works by Brahms, Ravel, Fauré et al
Alexandre Tharaud and friends (piano)
Erato 5419793352 63:31 mins
In this charming box of surprises, Alexandre Tharaud ropes in 22 friends to showcase the marvels of the four-hand piano repertoire. Its heyday was the mid-19th century, when middle class families played music at home: for most it was the only way they would ever hear orchestral works – recording hadn’t been invented. Four-hand pianism today survives mostly in music schools, or in families when piano-playing siblings are induced to show off.
Yet as Tharaud points out in his liner note, this is the most intimate form of chamber music: there’s something very sensual, he says, about your proximity, which allows you to experience the most secret, and most profound aspects of your partner’s character.
'Some of the players are young stars, and a few hide coyly behind pseudonyms'
He’s brought together many generations, and many long-standing friends from his time at the Paris Conservatoire, and he’s even included some who are not professional pianists at all (Gautier Capuçon and Philippe Jaroussky). Some are young stars, and a few hide coyly behind pseudonyms (‘Mr Nobody’). But all play with professional polish.
One of Tharaud’s aims is to reveal repertoire which has been largely lost, and in this respect he is resoundingly successful. Piano teachers, and pairs of soloists looking for suitable encore material, will find riches here.
Kurtág’s arrangement of a Bach chorale is one notable trouvaille, and Bizet’s arrangement of Schumann’s Étude en forme de canon in A flat is another; Rachmaninov’s take on Tchaikovsky’s Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty, and Philip Glass’s darkly-driven Stokes are two more.
Everything here has charm, and radiates what should always be the mainspring for chamber music: sheer joy in making it. Michael Church