Pianists Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier have known each other since their teens, and while each of them pursues a busy international career, they love getting together to play as a duo. That was the case in February when they took the stage of Toronto's Koerner Hall to play a program of four-hands and two-piano repertoire for a crowd of 800. CBC Classical was there to capture the performance, which you can watch below.
"Repertoire for four hands and two pianos is great music," said Lortie to CBC recording producer Alison Howard, "but it's getting played less and less." Lortie and Mercier are doing their part to keep the piano duo repertoire alive. They have been performing together since the 1980s, and have made a number of critically acclaimed recordings.
One of the staples of the four-hands repertoire is Schubert's Fantasy in F minor. "This is a must when you play piano four hands," said Mercier backstage at Koerner Hall. "It has been in our lives for a while now; we recorded it 12 years ago, and we have played it quite a lot. We continue learning things about this piece. It's very deep. It reminds me somewhat of Bruckner: I find it extremely dense, and not necessarily light, the way it's often played. And of course it's full of tenderness, passion and drama."
"There's something comical about the interplay of four hands on one piano," said Lortie. How do they decide who's on top? "That's quite easy," explained Mercier. "We discuss it, and we usually agree." They take time to study the scores on their own, and generally come to a mutual decision about who will play which part.
The bigger challenge, especially for Lortie, is creating a blended, balanced sound when two pianos are involved. "That's the most difficult thing for me because I play more solo music. So each time I come back to playing duo repertoire, Hélène has to remind me, 'You know, you're not alone. The two of us together will make too much volume [if you don't scale back your playing.]' You know, it's ugly, the sound of two pianos playing fortissimo, full blast from both players."
There's nothing ugly about the sound they achieve in Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan. Reviewer Patrick P.L. Lam wrote of their performance: "their complementary efforts poured over bar lines and made music out of Liszt’s densely filled pages, surging and receding in persuasive ways."
The centrepiece of their performance was Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, running nearly 35 minutes, better known in its orchestral version.
"This is a very strange piece," admits Lortie. "It's the least pianistic of all the pieces of Rachmaninov that I have played. You can tell he was already conceiving of it for orchestra. But Rachmaninov always writes well for the piano. He played it with Horowitz, apparently. These pieces from Rachmaninov's late period [are] possibly a little more puzzling for people used to the works from his early period. He goes in strange directions. Even the melodies, they're dissolving sometimes. Snippets and bits of waltzes and dances. As if it's something people were remembering from the past. Nostalgic."
Related:
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Watch Marc-André Hamelin's recital at Vancouver's Chan Centre