Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica for Two Pianos is an enchanted musical forest, replete with thorny vegetation, sunny, grassy openings, florid paths, and dark, foreboding depths, its final moments expunged in a wild, pagan dance. Okay, so much for letting the imagination run wild–but this is one wild piece, a work Busoni crafted from his own imagination and from the unfinished final section of Bach’s Art of Fugue. In fact, three of the four works on this excellent two-disc program are based on fugue subjects and styles. They were deliberately chosen as part of a 1997 New York concert by András Schiff and Peter Serkin that brought these two stylistically divergent pianists into a fascinating and most unusual “contest of temperaments”. You’ll be impressed with the sheer dynamism of the playing; and although this is a studio recording made near the time of the concert, the pianists’ interactive energy and apparent spontaneity are the stuff that usually happens when the best artists are communicating with a live audience. The Max Reger Variations is a marvelous piece that has various levels of intricacy, but a surface of easy accessibility–and a lovely Beethoven tune. The two Mozart double-piano works–a busy, boisterous fugue, and a fabulous sonata that’s not a symphony in hiding but a real piano piece–complete this ideally recorded program. Schiff and Serkin may have quite different personal playing styles and temperaments, but when they play this repertoire, they make sparks–and really rip-roaring music. [11/8/1999]
