COMPOSERS: Brahms; Saint-Saens
LABELS: Warner
ALBUM TITLE: Brahms & Saint-Saens
WORKS: Sonata for two pianos in F minor
PERFORMER: Güher & Süher Pekinel (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 2564 61959-2
The Turkish piano-duo twins
Güher and Süher Pekinel turn
in a very creditable performance
of Brahms’s two-piano Sonata
in F minor. I particularly liked
their crispness of attack, the
light, alert staccato that avoids
undue heaviness; and much of
the music is beautifully paced
and articulated, especially in the
Andante, performed with great
emotional sympathy and ideal
plasticity of phrasing. Here and
there are momentary lapses of
ensemble, virtually inevitable in
a work so taxing for the medium.
But overall this is fine playing, and
superbly recorded, too.
Yet I found their performance
somehow uninvolving: perhaps a
mite superficial, even jaunty
where Brahms intends considerably
more pathos and passion. They
cannot rival the powerful
articulation of the near-symphonic
sweep of the Sonata’s designs,
and the sheer depth and intensity
with which Emanuel Ax and
Yefim Bronfman (reviewed in
August) invest its complex and
troubled moods. Though far
better recorded, what the Pekinels’
interpretation lacks above all is
a sense of struggle, something
that is integral to any meaningful
conception of the piece.Their virtues serve them better
in the two Hungarian Dances, and
in Brahms’s own, seldom-heard
two-piano versions of five of the
Op. 39 Waltzes, all beautifully
done. And their talents are ideally
suited to the ironic classicizing of
Saint-Saëns’s witty and inventive
Variations on a Theme of Beethoven,
once quite well-known but these
days a rarity indeed. Trim, smart
and admirably controlled (like the
piece itself ), their excellent account
of this formidably accomplished
work is the real reason to buy the
disc. Calum MacDonald