Magical delights, whether listening with mother courtesy of Fauré, boating or looking back to antiquity with Debussy, taking it easy with Stravinsky, crashing about while relishing the coruscating wit and tender sentiment of pithy Poulenc, or surveying a fairy garden with Ravel (goosebumps galore), here is exhilarating and expressive music given scintillating and sensitive outings by two gentlemen of the keyboard seated at one piano and recorded with exemplary clarity and tangibility. Many happy/transporting hours await on Hyperion CDA68329.
To put flesh on the above:
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68329
Further pianoforte on Hyperion:
An interesting point about Debussy’s Six Epigraphes Antiques. Although, as Roger Nichols’s excellent booklet notes state, the work was put together in 1914, it was not publicly performed until after Debussy’s death four years later. The premiere was given (I believe) in 1921, when the pianists were Darius Milhaud and Georges Auric. Curiously, Milhaud played the viola part in the only time Debussy heard his Sonate for flute, viola and harp, when it was given privately at the composer’s publisher’s house (Durand) at the end of 1915. Milhaud told me that Debussy was quite moved on hearing his work, and thanked the musicians individually. But these two world premieres (in effect) with another composer playing different instruments in each work, has to be unique in music history.