Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

Duo Miho & Masumi Hio Piano Four Hands

Stravinsky

Le Sacre du Printemps

Hindemith

Sonata (for Piano Four Hands)

Ravel

Rhapsodie Espagnole

Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps (1912-13, revised 1947)

Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971) Le Sacre du Printemps

Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963) Sonata (für Klavier vierhändig)

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937) Rhapsodie espagnole

01 I Première Partie - L’adoration de la Terre: Introduction (The Adoration of the Earth: Introduction) 02 II Les Augures Printaniers: Danses des Adolescentes (The Augurs of Spring: Dances of the Young Girls)

03 III Jeu du Rapt (Mock Abduction)

04 IV Rondes Printanières (Spring Rounds)

05 V Jeux des Cités Rivales (Games of the Two Rival Tribes)

06 VI Cortège du Sage (Procession of the Oldest and Wisest One [the Sage]) 07 VII Adoration de la Terre (Le Sage) (The Kiss of the Earth (The Oldest and Wisest One) [The Sage]

08 VIII Danse de la Terre (The Dancing Out of the Earth) 09 I Seconde Partie - Le Sacrifice: Introduction (The Sacrifice: Introduction)

10 II Cercles Mystérieux des Adolescentes (Mystic Circle of the Young Girls)

11 III Glorification de l’Élue (The Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One)

12 IV Evocation des Ancêtres (Evocation of the Ancestors)

13 V Action Rituelle des Ancêtres (Ritual Action of the Ancestors)

14 VI Danse Sacrale (L’Élue) (Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One))

2’56 3’10 1’13 3’24 1’22 0’53

0’32 1’21 4’15 2’28 1’36 0’40 4’06 4’16

Paul Hindemith - Sonata (für Klavier vierhändig) (1938)

Duo Miho & Masumi Hio,

piano four hands

15 I Mäßig bewegt - Ruhig - Wie am Anfang - Ruhiger, feierlich 5’18 16 II Lebhaft

2’57 17 III Ruhig bewegt - Sehr lebhaft - Im früheren Zeitmaß - Wie am Anfang des Satzes

8’03

Maurice Ravel - Rhapsodie espagnole (1907) 18 19 20 21

I Prélude à la nuit. Modéré

II Malagueña. Assez vif

III Habanera. En demi-teinte et d’un rhythme las

IV Feria. Assez vif

4’06 1’58 2’49 6’22

TT 63’51

T

wo players at one piano: the quintessential picture of domestic music making. But if we look closely at that picture and imagine what music is being played, it is unlikely to come from the 20th century. The reasons for this are complex but include social factors - music in the home increasingly being supplied by recorded rather than live means - and directly musical ones - the tendency for musical language in the 20th century to focus on specialist performers to the virtual exclusion of the amateur.

Perhaps of all the works of the 20th century, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps is among the least likely to be suited to a domestic setting. It was written for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, synonymous with performance

spectacle, and its notorious premiere in 1913 was a highly public scandal and continues to be the most talked about first performance of all. This sort of uproar does not transfer easily to the home. And if for much of its first century Le Sacre has not so often been danced as a ballet, as performed as a concert work, it has become an orchestral showcase, an essential proving ground of virtuosity and display for orchestras and conductors around the world.

What then do we hear when the piece is played by two players at one piano?

Stripped of its orchestral colour, the first shock is probably hearing the famous opening high bassoon replaced by something more neutral, perhaps akin to seeing a colourful work of art in a black and white re-

production. At this point we might be tempted to agree with Pierre Monteux (the work’s first conductor) that to hear the work without its orchestral colour is to lose one of its main attractions. We may also miss some of the complex layering provided by the 100 or more players of the large orchestra, but we also gain from the intensity and precision of two performers.

As the work progresses, the repeating melodic cells, for example in Rondes Printanières, become mesmerising without the distractions of instrumental colour. Indeed the piece can seem even more radical as the percussive edge of hammers hitting strings unleashes the extraordinary rhythms of the final Danse Sacrale. It therefore becomes possible to hear the work afresh, free from the trappings of the orchestral

show-piece it has become.

Hearing the work played on a piano, we are certainly brought closer to the composition of the piece and the sonorities that Stravinsky himself will first have experienced as he composed. Stravinsky worked on the four-hand version of the work at the same time as the orchestral score and it was the piano version which was published first (1913), the orchestral score only appearing in print later (1921). The piano score therefore preserves some of Stravinsky’s original notations which were altered in later revisions of the orchestral score. We are also brought much closer to the experience of those who first heard the work, before that notorious premiere, including of course, Diaghilev himself, Monteux and the first dancers.

The crisper, drier sound world of the piano version of Le Sacre can certainly sound more authentically Stravinskian than orchestral opulence. Significantly Stravinsky’s next collaboration with Diaghilev, Les Noces, was first scored for orchestra (1917) but its final version was for four pianos and percussion (1923).

The piano duet version of Le Sacre therefore connects the sound of these two pieces, which are in many ways the most Russian of his larger works. It is also no surprise to find the piano playing a large role in his output of the following decade as he establishes his neoclassical credentials, in works like the Concerto for piano and wind instruments (1923-4), Sonata for piano (1924), Serenade in A for piano (1925) and Capriccio for piano and orchestra (19289). The piano duet version

of the Le Sacre therefore enables us to hear the work through the ears of the composer of the final version of Les Noces and his later music, rather than those of the composer of the earlier Firebird. It has a ring of authenticity about it which means it is best understood not as an arrange- ment of the orchestral score, and thereby a convenient, if demanding, way of playing the piece at home, but as an alternative version of the work in its own right, able to take its own place in the concert hall.

Hindemith’s Sonate (für Klavier vierhändig) (1938) is part of his extended cycle of more than 20 sonatas, written between 1935 and 1955, for virtually every orchestral instrument. There is a utilitarian function in providing repertoire for, often neglected, solo in-

struments and in this case for a traditionally domestic medium. The worthiness of this project, with the taint of Gebrauchsmusik, has led to a degree of critical disdain. The sonatas have many features in common: clear tonal structures, which nevertheless contain a wide range of harmonies both triadic and nontriadic, clear forms with a strong basis in repeating thematic structures and many rhythmic, melodic and contrapuntal features informed by Baroque music. It is however a mistake to undervalue the individual qualities of each sonata.

The first movement of the piano duet sonata has a clear sonata form with two contrasted thematic ideas, both very typical of Hindemith’s melodic invention - the first a flowing melodic line and the sec-

ond whose more solemn and formal character is fully revealed at the conclusion of the movement. The movement is clearly rooted on E but with a strong role for the subdominant A. The second movement is a lively and highly characterful scherzo, centred on C sharp. Much of the rhythmic character of the main section stems from the use of a 9 beat pattern against the alla breve metre. This sort of technique is not dissimilar to some of Stravinsky’s rhythmic procedures in Le Sacre, but here Hindemith works within a much more Germanic sense of relationship between form and material. The rhythmic shifts contribute much to the playfulness of the movement, something which is also reflected in the tonal structure, exemplified by the harmonic twist at

the end of the movement when an apparently final cadence on B flat minor is abruptly replaced with a C sharp minor chord.

The final movement is tripartite (slow-fast-slow) with the slow sections beginning away from, but eventually cadencing on, the tonic E, and the middle section is a compound time moto perpetuo which shares thematic material with the enclosing slow sections. The main material of the slow sections is perhaps the most referentially Baroque in the whole work and this is at its clearest at the beginning of the final section where it is presented fugally, not through the traditional pattern of tonic and dominant entries but in a chromatically descending sequence which also serves to move the fugue subject from the treble register to the bass.

Like Le Sacre, Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole was first played as a piano duet (1907) before it was orchestrated the following year. The relationship between orchestral and piano versions of Ravel’s music is a fluid one and as he was a supreme colourist in both media, it is easy to claim an equal validity for both versions of a work.

If Hindemith is primarily concerned with an abstract working out of material, and Stravinsky with a gestural (primarily rhythmic) language related to the physicality of dance, Ravel’s music is altogether more evocative. Possibly because Ravel had not actually visited Spain at this time, there is a strong dream-like quality to the evocation; something essentially exotic.

The third movement, Habanera, (originally written

12 years earlier as part of a work for two pianos) utilises the idiom which following Carmen had become the most potent symbol of Spanish exoticism.

Ravel’s music may share with Stravinsky the feature of repeating ostinato patterns, but they are used to completely different effect. The falling four note figure, spanning a dimin-

ished fourth, which opens the work and dominates the first movement is a far cry from the percussive patterns of the Stravinsky. It sets up a subtle metric and harmonic ambiguity full of hypnotic charm. The second movement has repeating patterns which make clear reference to Spanish dance and this is taken further in the ensuing Haba-

nera, which combines the familiar repeating habanera rhythm with a C sharp which continues almost throughout the movement. The final movement is the most extended; it again makes strong references to Spanish dance patterns and includes a slower middle section, ultimately developing its material in combination with the return of the open-

ing falling four-note figure.

These three works could hardly be more different in origin. They are all, however, four-hand piano music written for more than the private pleasure of the performers. This is music for listeners too.

Hugh Collins Rice

M

iho and Masumi Hio were solo piano pupils of Elisabeth Vaeth-Schadler and Martyn van den Hoek at the Carinthia State Music Conservatory (Kärntner Landeskonservatorium) and the Vienna Conservatory (Konservatorium Wien). After earning their diplomas as soloists with distinction, they married in 2005, forming a piano duo and have performed together ever since.

While exploring and expanding their duo repertoire, they pursued a diploma for Piano Duo Performance with Bruno Mezzena at the Music Academy of Pescara, Italy, receiving perfect marks,

lauds, and special mention. They are prize winners of several international piano-duo and chamber music competitions in Europe and the USA, including the “Bradshaw International Competition”, earning them the opportunity to perform Le Sacre du Printemps in Carnegie Hall, New York.

Their performance activity as a duo began with recitals at the former Japan Bösendorfer Corporation and Sougakudou (Tokyo) in Japan, and has since taken them to many music festivals in Austria, Switzerland, England and Japan. Their concert performances have been recorded for live broadcast on several occasions for ORFKärnten.

d Recorded at Studio Odradek, August 2011 Produced by John Anderson Steinway “B” Fabbrini Collection Piano Technician: Sound Engineer: Mastering and Mixing Engineer:

Luigi Fusco Thomas A. Liebermann Thomas Vingtrinier, Sequenza Studio, Paris.

Artist Photos: Graphic Design:

Hoshi Studio Alice SRL, Pescara

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