Ravel: Rapsodie Espagnole (for 2 pianos)

‘This Ravel recital is quite outstanding in every way’. Penguin Guide Rosette

One of the twentieth century's greatest pianists returns to the piano with a disc of rarely recorded French Impressionist duets with his son Vovka Ashkenazy.

For his new ONYX CD Pascal is joined by his wife Ami for a programme of French masterworks for orchestra by Debussy and Ravel in arrangements for two pianos. The arrangement of 'La Mer' is the Rogés' own, the others are by the composers. The transcription by Maurice Ravel (1908) of Debussy’s 'Fetes', in the words of the distinguished musicologist Maurice Hinson, "has been translated into the two-piano idiom with independent artistry [and] ranks with the best original writing in the two-piano medium." Unlike Liszt’s single-movement 'Spanish Rhapsody' for solo piano, Ravel’s is a four-movement suite for two pianos: ‘Prélude à la Nuit’, ‘Malagueña’, ‘Habanera’ and ‘Feria’. It was written within the space of a few weeks in October but built around the ‘Habanera’ which had formed the first movement of his 'Sites articulaire' of 1895. Its recycling may have had something to do with Ravel’s resentment at being accused of plagiarising a passage from Debussy’s ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ of 1903 written in the same key with a habanera rhythm and a similar use of an insistent C sharp clashing against the harmonies.

Ravel pointedly attached the date ‘1895’ underneath his ‘Habanera’ in the two-piano score of Rapsodie espagnole and the orchestral version which he prepared in the early months of 1908.

Pascal Rogé has for many years been considered the prime interpreter of French piano repertoire. His recordings of Satie and the Debussy Preludes (ONYX4004) are benchmark recordings. BBC Radio 3 when reviewing the Debussy Preludes said they "came close to a definitive interpretation" and Telerama in France commented "Très beau, tres éduisant. Souverain".

Celebrating the centenary of the radical sounds of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, performed in Stravinsky’s own piano four hands scoring, allowing the listener to come closer to the sonorities that Stravinsky himself will first have experienced as he composed, alongside the Hindemith Sonata for Piano Four Hands and Ravel’s Rhapsodie espagnole.

Miho 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.

Winners of a number of awards, the sisters Mona and Rica Bard now present their first CD, a pas de deux though 80 years of French piano music. At one and at two instruments, they create a panorama of piano sound, ranging from the simulation of orchestral colours, percussive and motoric élan to the suggestion of an intensive song-like quality. With Bizet‘s Jeux d’enfants, Ravel‘s Rapsodie espagnole and Poulenc‘s Sonata for Two Pianos, this SACD contains three 'secret' masterworks by their respective composers. With its combination of elegance, irony and samba rhythms, the Scaramouche Suite quickly became Darius Milhaud‘s most popular work. Four hands, two sisters, one pulse – Mona & Rica Bard have won national and international awards at competitons; among them the German Music Competition, the Concorso Internazionale di Musica da Camera Palma d`Oro (Finale Ligure) and the Concorso Internazionale per Duo Pianistico Twenty Fingers (Rome). The Ensemble was accepted in the National Selection of Young Artists’ Concerts of the German Music Council and in the artists’ list of the association Yehudi Menuhin – Live Music Now. Extensive concert engagements have taken Mona & Rica Bard throughout Europe, to Asia the USA and to numerous festivals such as the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the NCPA May Festival Peking and the Chicago Piano Duo Festival.

Ravel was a pianist, and the piano was central to his art. The piano was the instrument through which he discovered and expressed innovations in style, technique and expression. He composed at the piano, and, unsurprisingly, many of his orchestral works (Bolero being the exception) appeared in piano versions. Although his entire output is modest – around 60 works, he transcribed more than half of these works for 2 pianos, or piano duet.

Apart from the well known works, this 2cd set contains some little known pieces – Entre cloches of 1897 was only published in 1975, and was originally appended to the Haberna, now better known as the 3rd movement of Rapsodie espagnole. Frontispice for 2 pianos, 5 hands was written in 1918.

Ravel’s mother had died in 1917, and he was deeply attached to her. Her loss resulted in 3 years of musical silence, with the exception of Frontispice. It is a short and very experimental work published with a collection of philospohical war poetry by the Italian Ricciotto Canudo. It is a curiously evocative work, almost surreal.

iDuo came into being in 2007, when the brilliant young pianists Andrey Gugnin and Vadym Kholodenko combined their skills as soloists to form a vibrant new piano duo. In their very first year of concert appearances, touring Russia and Italy, iDuo was praised for stunning performances, and was a prizewinner in the 2008 San Marino competition.

The rarely-heard Rachmaninoff Op. 11 Suite is captivating in iDuo’s hands, as is Debussy’s well-loved “Petite Suite.” Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole” is colourful and exciting, and the “Mother Goose” Suite works its magic with deceptive simplicity.

Recorded in 1955