Speidel Trenkner Piano Duo

Franz Schubert was deeply attached to the piano! You can sense this when you hear Robert Franz' magnificent transcription of Schubert's quartet Death and the Maiden, with which the duo Lontano (Babette Hierholzer and Jürgen Appell) open their second GENUIN album. In a recording that exclusively features Schubert’s music, the structures and the relentlessness of the work are mercilessly and yet beautifully sculpted in all their grandeur. Suddenly the quartet is very similar to the great F minor Fantasy, while the Notturno, originally for piano trio, is given a new sense of levitation. A great ensemble, two wonderful pianists, three summits of chamber music! Duo Lontano was founded in 2004. The two artists can look back on years of successful concertizing on extended tours to Italy, Germany, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, Poland, and the USA. Recent concert highlights have included appearances in Wurzburg, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Palermo, White Plains, and Petropolis.

There is a recurrent theme running through the program presented by the Dena Piano Duo in this production; all four composers and works have a particular relationship to Edvard Grieg. Both Johannes Brahms and Camille Saint-Saëns were friends of Grieg, and in several of his works the inspiration Grieg gained from his colleagues in Vienna and Paris is easy to hear. In between the works of Brahms and Saint-Saëns the Dena Piano Duo play two Norwegian works they have commissioned from the composers Wolfgang Plagge and Terje Bjørklund with this recording in mind.

Mozart was without a doubt one of Edvard Grieg's favourite composers. When his mother gave lessons or entertained family and friends for an evening of music, it was the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which made the greatest impression on him. During the winter of 1876/77 he arranged four of Mozart's nineteen piano sonatas for two pianos by adding his own, newlsy composed part. What is special about Grieg's adaptations of the Mozart sonatas is that he has not reworked them in the traditional - and perhaps derogatory - manner. Grieg's unusual achievement lies in the fact that he has retained Mozart's text unchanged, adding an entirely new part which can be performed together with the original. When both parts are played, they interweave and become something entirely new. Two different musical styles meet in dialogue, ending up in a symbiosis of colour and texture. Mozart's music expands in time and space. Grieg's additional piano part is a romantic's respectful embrace, a romantic commentary; Mozart in romantic guise.