Fall in love with piano duets
The history of the piano duet - plus some great duets to learn!
There is something about the keyboard that invites interwoven, even orchestral textures: the range of available pitches, perhaps, the reliability of reproduction and the rich timbral palette. Beethoven, Liszt and Rachmaninov wrote for every available key and tonality in their solo piano writing for two hands. Godowsky then did the same, but (to the torment of many a pianist since) achieved something similar by using only the left hand.
The piano keyboard has always challenged composers to find new timbres, previously unimagined weights of sound, fresh imaginative journeys. Two players at a single keyboard was a facet of composition for the instrument long before it evolved into the instrument we know today. So how did it all start?
Mozart and his sister, Maria Anna 'Nannerl':
In the beginning
According to the pianist and scholar Howard Ferguson, ‘the earliest undisputed keyboard duets that have survived were written by English virginalist composers in the 16th and early 17th centuries.’ The Fancy for Two to Play by Thomas Tomkins (1572-1640) ‘is a genuinely idiomatic duet,’ he observes. ‘Its antiphonal and imitative procedures were undoubtedly derived from choral techniques; but they are also well suited to establishing the separate identity of the two players.’ Ferguson is astute in highlighting that the nature of a duet does not preclude a true musical dialogue in which each performer has their own, individual role to play. As the fortepiano of the late 18th century became a focal point at musical soirées, and then a symbol of social mobility and standing during the 19th century, these roles became more sharply defined in the music composed for piano duet.
Education or entertainment?
Piano duets from the second half of the 18th century onwards served a range of purposes. Composers adapted accordingly when writing both the primo (treble) and secondo (bass) parts. Relatively short and easy works are aimed at students. David Rowland argues that ‘from the 1760s onwards there was a rapid expansion of duet composition, almost all of it for the domestic market’. Pieces written for teachers and students tend to feature a lower part pitched at a more difficult level than the upper part; this approach to scoring remains an attractive one for motivating students, because the overall outcome sounds that bit more impressive.
Then there are works demanding virtuosity from both players, such as the Sonata K497 by Mozart and the fabulous Allegro brillant by Mendelssohn; both probably written with the composers to play with their own sisters, who were accomplished pianists in their own right.
François Barraud and Albert Locca:
The radio of the 19th century
Families and groups of music-lovers came to know the symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms in duet arrangements, often long before they could take a rare opportunity to hear them played in their original, orchestral clothing. Music for piano trios, string quartet and many other formations also appeared in duet versions, whether transcribed by the composers themselves, favoured arrangers (such as Theodor Kirchner for Brahms), or hacks of varying competence employed by publishers. The relationship also worked in reverse. Ravel wrote the piano duet version of Rapsodie espagnole before orchestrating it.
With the arrival of recording technology in the last decade of the 19th century, the appetite for piano duets began to wane. Fast forward another century and the piano duet is still popular, albeit mostly as a pedagogical tool. Thus the history of the piano duet has turned full circle.
The pianist, an unlikely chamber musician
Unlike melody instruments, which can be played in ensembles such as string groups and symphonic wind or brass bands, playing the piano can be a solitary task. Learning by listening and responding to others is not as much a part of a young pianist’s training as it might be. Supplying both melody and harmony, varying the tempo, altering the tone; all of this is done solo, without recourse to the reactions or judgement of others. Thus playing in duet is a valuable exercise in its own right. Quite apart from developing sight-reading, duet playing requires the solo pianist to think beyond a strictly triangular relationship between reading, playing and listening to oneself. Responding to another musician is the educational spanner in the works that is of inestimable value for the development of general musicianship.
There are also wider, yet music-specific skills that duet players tend to develop. Agreeing who does what involves experimentation, discussion and decision-making, all of which are transferable life skills. Who will do the pedalling, for example? Dvořák kindly specified in his Slavonic Dance Op 72 No 1, where the pedal marks are written below the secondo part. He was an exception to the rule.
There are basic issues such starting together and turning the page. Other, more nuanced demands may come naturally to other musicians while remaining a challenge for pianists. Listen to a group of 16 professional string players and the ensemble skills are highly developed. Put sixteen pianists on eight pianos and ask them to play a Czerny arrangement of a Rossini overture, and performing as a tightly knit ensemble remains predominantly an aspiration.
The social dimension
Quite apart from developing musicianship, playing piano duets involves sharing a relatively narrow space with another person. The physical proximity between a teacher and student requires mindful consideration. Imagine how much more unusual or uncomfortable it would have felt to adults in the late 18th century when etiquette dictated that people retained a respectable distance between each other. In the preface to his Four Sonatas or Duets on One Pianoforte or Harpsichord (1777), Charles Burney offers the following advice:
‘Though, at first, the near approach of the hands of the performers may seem awkward and embarrassing, a little use and contrivance with regard to the manner of placing them, and the choice of fingers, will soon remove that difficulty’. We may infer from this both the unusual nature of the social situation, and then how it became acceptable through a common focus on the music and the instrument.
It would be mischievous, not to say far-fetched, to make over-stated claims for the historic value of the duet as a dating mechanism. However, making music together, and in close proximity, continues to enhance both social and musical skills. Focusing on the musical aspect, Howard Ferguson describes this more formally, but also aptly: duets ‘provide pianists with invaluable experience in ensemble playing, which is all too often lacking from the lives of those who sit and work alone at a keyboard.’
By Nils Franke
The Jussen brothers:
© Dirk Kikstra
DUETS TO DIVE INTO
1 Schubert The range of Schubert’s piano duet music never ceases to amaze. Yes, there is Hausmusik, music for the home, but there are also astonishingly profound works for this medium. Getting hold of pretty much any volume of piano duets by this composer will give you access to a body of work that epitomizes musical beauty and refinement.
2 Romantic duets The Six Pieces Op 11 of Rachmaninov must top the list, written at a time when he still taught the piano! The parts are written with a remarkable economy of means, especially the Barcarolle.
3 Early 20th century Try Stravinsky. There are two sets of easy pieces from 1915 and 1917 respectively. The former has an easier secondo part, the latter an easier primo.
4 The Italian job Ottorino Respighi’s Six Little Pieces are wonderful, late-Romantic and easily accessible works (No 4 is included in this issue). Unsurprisingly for a former student of Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi writes with an orchestral depth and breadth of sonority; the pieces are involved without becoming too demanding.
5 British Music William Walton’s Piano Duets for Children. There are 10 pieces, written for the composer’s niece and nephew. Clever writing, as one would expect, and top-notch from a musical point of view.
Eight piano duets to listen to and treasure
Mozart: Concerto for Two Pianos
Emil and Elena Gilels
Deutsche Grammophon 463652-2
A father-daughter partnership, immortalised here in the spacious, carefree concerto which Mozart wrote for himself and his sister Nannerl to play, though father Leopold also wrote out some of the parts: an affair of truly happy families.
Fauré: Dolly
Gaby and Robert Casadesus
Sony/RCA G010003519214I (download only)
Now a musical marriage, though husband and wife practised separately in sound-proofed rooms so as not to disturb the other. Robert and Gaby both knew Fauré; Gaby later wrote a tender memoir of their time, My Musical Marriage.
Debussy: En blanc et noir
Benjamin Britten, Sviatoslav Richter
Decca 466821-2
Richter was one of several Russian musicians to hit it off with Britten in the 1960s; Richter was unused to playing in duet and spread his elbows wide, meaning that Britten had to squeeze in the secondo part, but theirs is a uniquely searching and dynamic partnership, a meeting of brilliant minds.
Mozart: Sonata for two pianos
Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia
Sony/RCA 8869-785811-2
Two famously refined musicians, live at Aldeburgh, like Britten and Richter, in the sonata written by Mozart for himself and a talented pupil, Josepha Auernhammer.
Schubert: Fantasia in F minor
Imogen Cooper, Anne Queffélec
Warner/Erato 0927-49812-2
A set which put two young pianists on the map, in surely the single most sublime work written for duet; Cooper remembers how the producer had to leave her desk and creep into the studio in her stockinged feet in order to turn the pages.
Brahms: Hungarian Dances
Katia and Marielle Labèque
Philips 416459-2
Brahms lets his hair down: there’s an irrepressible sense of fun in the partnership of the Labèque sisters, who have played together for over 30 years and have commissioned new duet works from Philip Glass and Nico Muhly, among others.
Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals
Martha Argerich, Antonio Pappano
Warner Classics 9029-57555-5
Martha Argerich has been an enthusiastic duo player with several partners over the years, including Stephen Kovacevich, more recently Daniel Barenboim and now Sir Antonio Pappano, on this superbly mischievous new Carnival.
Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen
Christina and Michelle Naughton
Warner Classics 2564-60113-6
A pair of American sisters, the Naughtons have set new standards in the cycle written in 1943 by Olivier Messiaen for himself and his pupil (and later wife) Yvonne Loriod to play together. A 20th-century classic of the duet repertoire.
Recommended reading
Ferguson, H. (1995) Keyboard Duets. Oxford: OUP
Rowland, D. (ed.) (1998) The Cambridge Companion to the Piano. Cambridge: CUP