Yuletide Treats - Duo Pleyel

The Duo Pleyel record on Linn a Christmas holiday album featuring music by F. Liszt, G.F. Handel, the two Johann Strauss’s and P. Tchaikovsky.

Wife and husband team Alexandra Nepomnyaschaya and Richard Egarr (Duo Pleyel) record duets for piano in this new album on Linn. The acoustic space in which they play is comes across as an overly dry location, but the pianos are not miked too closely. The result is a very intimate presentation that is laser focused on the sound of the instruments. There’s not anywhere for things to hide in this presentation, I know I’d fear of breathing too hard for it to be captured in the recording. I dare say it’s a fresh take on an album’s sound, highlighting the excellent sound coming from their Chris Maene pianos. (Maene makes historical copies, but the pianos here are his modern grands which don’t cross strings on the soundboard.)

The album opens with Liszt’s Weihachtsbaum S. 613, three pieces, the first being the most familiar as Christmas music, quoting “In dulci jubilo.”

Style makes a 180 with two movements from Handel’s Messiah, “For unto us a child is born” and the chorus, “Hallelujah!” I have to say hearing Egarr play these Handel arrangements on piano is tongue-in-cheek fun. As a duo, their coordination, in lock step, makes the famous chorus work, and the bass support from the pianos, which have excellent consistent voicing across the keyboard is sonically satisfying.

Dynamics become more pronounced in the waltz by Johann Strauss II, An der schönen blauen Donau. The extreme compass of the pianos are exercised in the Radetzky March by Johann Strauss I.

The highlight of the album, however for me, was the arrangement taking nearly 22 minutes of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, The Nutcracker. During the second movement’s March I envisioned these two pianos playing in the salon of a large home, the fire lit, and the snow gently falling outdoors. Cliché, yes, but the acoustics of this album once again came to the fore for me, trying to rationalize the space in which these two pianos, at fuller volume, fill the space which is noticeably more compact than, say, a chamber hall. Rather than placing each piano on opposite sides of the stereo field, they seem integrated together which conveys the sense of being one instrument.

The familiarity of the ballet suite makes hearing their solution to music for orchestral work with a variety of dynamics and articulations. The Trepak dance showcases their technical abilities. One has to think playing together like this, lock-step as they are, even through an accelerando has to be a lot of fun.

The liner notes contain several pictures of the two musicians smiling. I have to think they did have fun making this album of Christmas season music. The programming of the more familiar pieces (Handel, Tchaikovsky) with what I imagine are less familiar (Strauss and Liszt) make for an interesting program.

I do not know if the duo plans to take this program on the road this winter, but if they do, I hope they get the benefit of the Maene pianos. For those who revel in piano sound, they are something.

The only thing missing from this album is a roar of applause after the final chord of Waltz of the Flowers.