Johannes Brahms
       Music for Two Pianos

* Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, op. 56b
* Sonata for Two Pianos in f, op. 34b
* Waltzes, op. 39

Martha Argerich, Alexandre Rabinovitch (pianos)
Teldec 4509 92257-2 Total time: 64:09

Summary for the Busy Executive: Suave, but not especially insightful.

Brahms, a musician with a head for business, died a wealthy man. He made
some of his money on the Viennese stock exchange, but when it came to
marketing his own compositions, he was a master. Unlike Beethoven, who
merely sold the "exclusive" rights to the same composition six or seven
times, Brahms cannily made different arrangements of the same works. Ein
deutsches Requiem, for example, exists in a version for two pianos,
soloists, and chorus. Both the third and fourth symphonies were published
first in arrangements for two pianos, before their premieres. Not only
did this stratagem, in the age before recorded music, make the work
available to those who didn't happen to live in cities where the symphonies
appeared on concert programs, it also allowed people to gain an intimacy
with the score before the official premiere. The liner notes point out
that two pianos itself is a fairly "elitist" combination, since not many
middle-class households owned two pianos. For this reason, four-handed
piano works (two players at one keyboard) were far more popular, and,
of course, Brahms wrote those works as well. However, the writer fails
to take into account how households make music. A lot of two-piano music
gets played on a single piano. Players simply work out the choreography.

Brahms in fact wrote the two-piano version of the Haydn-Variationen
before the orchestral one, although he always intended the work eventually
for the orchestra. The Sonata for 2 Pianos, however, had a more complex
story behind it. Brahms began it as a string quintet - this version now
lost. He recast it as the Sonata but remained dissatisfied. He then
turned it into the f-minor Piano Quintet. The opus 39 Waltzes began as
a work for solo piano.  Brahms also provided an "easy" edition, also
published, and mentioned to Simrock that he had arranged five of the
sixteen waltzes for two pianos.  Simrock declined to publish these for
about thirty years but, sensing more money to be made from a by-now
classic name, relented a year after Brahms had died.

The Haydn-Variationen, in my opinion, succeeds best of these works.
The Sonata is a bit heavy in the lyrical sections and monochromatic.
But I might think this way because I can't erase the memory of the Piano
Quintet, where the strings provide color contrast as well as greater
cantabile. The Waltzes seem perfect examples of the "normal" two-piano
genre, ideally suited to music-making in the home. The Haydn-Variationen,
of course, achieve far more, one of the greatest variation sets since
Beethoven.

The performances are a mixed bag. Argerich takes the primo piano for
the variations and the secundo for everything else. The variations sound
suave, rather than deep, with a beautiful "star" sheen. Yet it's probably
not the most penetrating interpretation you have ever heard. The passacaglia
finale, essentially a variation form with a set of variations, is all
surface - a beautiful surface, admittedly, but without the cumulative
power that, say, Klemperer manages to achieve. The sonata and the waltzes
are more percussive, rougher, which I put down to Rabinovitch taking the
lead. The sonata in particular comes across as hammering and unrelenting,
but in some part this comes from the nature of Brahms's writing. One of
these days, I'm going to have to do a score-by-score comparison of the
sonata and the piano quintet versions to check for essential differences
between them. Still, I expect Rabinovitch and Argerich to adjust. I would
have preferred a performance which sang more. This goes double for the
waltzes. Rabinovitch plays way too hyper, even affectedly, in the first.
The articulation - staccato sec - seems more like a feat, rather than
music-making. The second and third waltzes, on the other hand, are just
plain lovely, with a beautifully-managed rubato at the end of the third.
The fourth - a furious allegro reminiscent of some of the Hungarian
Dances - is plenty furious, but plenty lightweight as well. I've heard
more power from solo piano performances. My favorite waltz of any of the
versions is the one in A-flat, which closes this set - a gorgeous melody
with a radiant harmonic progression in the second strain. Rabinovitch
and Argerich disappoint big-time with a rather kitschy account. I prefer
Lipatti, Fleisher, and Klien.

The recorded sound is Teldec's usual faultless.

Steve Schwartz