Louis Théodore Gouvy (1819-1898) may have patterned his conservative Romantic style after Schumann and Mendelssohn (with a little Schubert tossed into the mix), yet he was no mere imitator but a vital and inventive creative personality in his own right. My colleague David Hurwitz enthusiastically reviewed CPO’s recordings of Gouvy’s symphonies, while two brand new 2014 releases respectively devoted to the composer’s three wonderful piano duet sonatas whetted my anticipation.
Compared alongside the Tal & Groethuysen Duo’s 1992 world-premiere Sony recordings, the Naoumoff & Cheng duo mostly favors slower tempos and opts for all first-movement exposition repeats, whereas Tal & Groethuysen observe just the First Sonata repeat. If Naoumoff & Cheng tread heavily through this work’s third-movement Intermezzo in contrast to Tal & Groethuysen’s brighter, suppler chord attacks, they imbue the second-movement Adagio with a wider range of inflections.
Parallel observations apply to the Second Sonata’s second and third movements. Tal & Groethuysen’s crisp and sprightly romp through the Third Sonata’s first movement evokes a Mendelssohn miniature, while Naoumoff & Cheng’s heftier reading suggests a Schumann symphonic allegro, if not Gouvy’s Allegro con brio tempo marking. On the other hand, few signs of life emerge from Naoumoff & Cheng’s slower, heavier, and square-toed readings of the Andantino scherzoso and Allegro risoluto.
I won’t dissuade you from sampling, streaming, or downloading some or all of the Naoumoff & Cheng release, should you wish to get a sense of Gouvy’s sonatas. However, the superior Tal & Groethuysen disc is not hard to locate from online sellers, and also includes five adorable, brilliantly played Gouvy four-hand miniatures. In short, Naoumoff & Cheng are not bad, but not great; perhaps the last word should be left to my British colleague who described one’s workmanlike conducting as “goodish”.
