French Music for Two Pianos
Works by Poulenc, Debussy and Milhaud
Charles Owen, Katya Apekisheva (piano)
Orchid Classics ORC100270 70:41 mins
Two pianos and an album of two parts. The three composers here may be French, but Poulenc and Milhaud inhabited a different musical world from their older countryman Debussy. Moreover, whereas the younger composers’ works were written specifically for piano duo, Debussy’s Three Nocturnes are in Ravel’s bravura arrangement, the latter’s superior ability to create orchestral colour from piano originals also working in the opposite direction.
Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva have plenty of spirit to their playing, whether in the quirkiness of Poulenc’s Capriccio or sublimities of his Sonata for Two Pianos. The latter has a magical hush to the conclusion of the Andantino lyrico and gorgeous moment of calm in the final Epilogue. A breezy jollity pervades Milhaud’s Scaramouche, even if it lacks the swift precision of the Labèque sisters’ version. The outer movements of Poulenc’s head-banging, youthful four-hand Sonata have plenty of vim. More questionable, though, is Owen and Apekisheva’s tempering of the cockiness in the otherwise restrained middle movement.Pianos are notoriously challenging instruments to record. The poetic moments are captured here with alluring warmth, but some livelier moments, such as the outer movements of Scaramouche, are hard-edged. Similarly, while Poulenc’s L’embarquement pour Cythère has an appropriately insouciant charm, there is a brittleness to the decorating chirrups and a glassy stridency to the sudden exclamation at the end of the Élégie. There are no such concerns with Debussy’s Nocturnes, which also finds Owen and Apekisheva at their best. Nuages is appropriately languid, the central Fêtes has a driving exuberance, and the murmuring, floating textures of Sirènes make an evocatively seductive conclusion to the album. Christopher Dingle