Germany's GrauSchumacher Piano Duo, consisting of Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher, has played a good deal of contemporary music, and even its perspective in this very traditionalist recital is a bit experimental. Bartók's Concerto for two pianos, percussion, and orchestra (1940), is linked to the other two works on the program in two ways. First, all three works were composed for duos consisting of the composers themselves and good female pianists in their lives: in Mozart's case his sister Nannerl, and in those of Liszt ...
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Germany's GrauSchumacher Piano Duo, consisting of Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher, has played a good deal of contemporary music, and even its perspective in this very traditionalist recital is a bit experimental. Bartók's Concerto for two pianos, percussion, and orchestra (1940), is linked to the other two works on the program in two ways. First, all three works were composed for duos consisting of the composers themselves and good female pianists in their lives: in Mozart's case his sister Nannerl, and in those of Liszt and Bartók their students. Second, Bartók's student Ditta Pástory became his wife, and they performed not only Bartók's own concerto together but also the Mozart Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, K. 365, and in all likelihood even the Liszt Concert Pathétique for two pianos (without orchestra) that serves here as an intermezzo. The most unusual feature of the album is that the Mozart is performed with a pair of cadenzas written by Bartók himself and only recently exhumed from the...
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