Bruckner’s symphonies don’t easily lend themselves to piano reductions. The problem largely lies within the composer’s long stretches of string tremolos. If one literally replicates these effects on the piano, they sound like the worst clichés of silent movie accompaniments and grow instantly tedious. However, in their world premier recording of Hermann Behn’s two-piano Seventh Symphony arrangement, Julius Zeman and Shin Oi successfully circumvent the problem by subjecting the tremolos to altered dynamics, speeds and articulations. This ensures more textural variety, and makes it easier for the pianists to focus on the contrapuntal foreground. Their tempo fluctuations in the first movement have an organic ebb and flow, allowing for assiduous transitions and for themes to take full shape.
Shifts in color and balance beautifully demarcate the Adagio’s harmonic twists and turns. It’s all too easy for even the best pianists to get bogged down while approaching the big C Major climax, yet Zeman and Oi avoid this by minimizing accented downbeats with their eyes and ears on the long lines. They bring more cogent horizontal interplay to the Scherzo than in many orchestral performances, abetted by a moderate basic tempo. And the pianists bring impressive timbral character to the Finale’s themes; note, for instance, the mellifluously voiced chorale against the warmth of the detaché bass lines in octaves. The sonics are a tad dry for music that calls out for a more resonant ambience, but that matters little in light of the pianists’ excellent ensemble values and intelligent music making. Naturally one shouldn’t be without a recording of the orchestral original, but if you want to hear Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony on two pianos, look no further.
