This Wellington Chamber Music concert features Duo Enharmonics, an exciting duo who specialise in Piano Four Hands - that is, music played by two performers on one piano. Nicole Chao and Beth Chen formed Duo Enharmonics in 2017 and they’ve been playing virtuosic and emotionally-thrilling programmes ever since.
Duo Enharmonics Photo: Supplied
Duo Harmonics' repertoire includes works from all over the classical music spectrum. In this concert, they perform work from the classical canon written especially for piano four hands by Mozart and Mendelssohn; contemporary work written especially for piano four hands by composers from New Zealand, Turkey and Poland; and the concert ends with a transcription of Stravinsky’s mighty orchestral ballet work, The Rite of Spring.
The first work on the programme is a jovial sonata written by a teenage Mozart, who would’ve performed it with his sister Nannerl on one piano when they toured around Europe together. The opening movement features heavily contrasting textures between the performers’ parts, demonstrating the orchestral impulse that even a young Mozart wove throughout his keyboard works.
Mendelssohn wrote this next work in 1841 for his friend Clara Schumann, and they performed it on the piano together. Melodies pass between the two performers in the first movement, and its soaring opening theme is described in the programme notes for this concert as one of the most exquisite melodies Mendelssohn ever wrote. In the much faster second movement, there are parts that recall the impish figurations of the composer’s earlier work, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Just like the Mozart and Mendelssohn works we’ve just heard, John Psathas composed his Motet especially to be performed on one piano by two players.The material ranges from quasi-freely notated sections to tightly scored driving rhythmic passages Duo Harmonics describe the work as having a cosmic feeling. To them, the opening seems to float in space and then from this sonic world, bright, sensuous bells – like stars – emerge.
On his website, John describes the Motet as quite a workout for the players that requires both dreamy lyricism and propulsive dynamic playing. Let’s hear how Duo Harmonics take on that challenge.
Night by Turkish composer and pianist, Fazil Say, will take us ‘careering through the mysterious, enticing and ominous aspects of the night,’ say the programme notes for this concert.
Composed in 2016, Night is one of a handful of works in which Fazil Say sonically explores certain parts of the day and the different emotional qualities they give to us. The middle section of Night features unusual extended technique sounds on the piano which the performers achieve by dampening certain piano strings with one hand while playing on the keys with the other.
VAN by Polish composer Hanna Kulenty opens quietly before it segues into the main ‘train ride’. The programme notes for this concert describe this ride as ‘a motoric, minimalist toccata of repeated rhythmic cells ... We are then transported to a brief final scene: a restful new world and time.’
For the finale of this concert, Duo Harmonics played a transcription of Stravinsky’s orchestral ballet work, The Rite of Spring.
Stravinsky used the piano for composing, and it was through this inherently percussive instrument that Ballet Russe director Diagalev first responded to the work’s pounding rhythms, resulting in the strange jerking movements of the dancers that caused so much controversy at its premiere.
The Rite of Spring is a beautiful yet brutal depiction of pagan Russia, centred around dances, games and rituals, culminating in the Chosen sacrificial victim dancing herself to death.
The Duo Harmonics programme notes say that on the piano ‘the brutality is heightened because the utterances sound more direct on an instrument that is capable of becoming a machine.’
Producer/Engineer: Darryl Stack
Recorded at St Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington on 2 October 2022
