The Round Table’s two-piano recital last night by Esther Lacey and Becky Nussbaum, guest artist, offered some refreshingly informal but nonetheless soundly professional music making.
The two-piano team succeeded best in the works written specifically for this medium, namely the Rachmaninoff suite – predictably mournful but pianistically exciting – and Milhaud’s “Scaramouche”, all boisterous parody.
Four-Square
The rhythmic vitality of the Bach Prelude illustrated the pianists’ splendid coordination, but the sonorities of the two fugues, so obviously conceived for the organ, took unkindly to two-piano arrangement.
More rehearsal might have enabled them to colour Albeniz’ Rapsodia Espanola with greater dynamic subtlety.
Mr Hainovitz confirmed that he has all the makings of a serious artist.
Literary Basis
In the face of his technical security and innate musicality, it may be ungenerous to suggest that he has not yet fully penetrated the introspective genre of lieder, where understatement is often the supreme eloquence.
But despite his fine singing, the foreboding and sadness of “The Boatman” and “Her Picture” were only partially conveyed. His sensitivity was confined to the musical surface and missed something of the literary basis of these songs.
The programme introduced us to a composer caller “Curshmann”. Was this an anagram of R. Schurmann? Is L. (van) Beethoven in danger of becoming Bleethoven soon>