There was a period when it was common for everything to be adapted for piano or piano duets. This was prior to the advent of radio and recordings, when symphonies, operas, concertos, and oratorios were transformed into versions that music enthusiasts with piano proficiency could play at home. Some of the most popular orchestral dances of the 19th-century, such as Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, actually originated as piano duets.
Notably, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was initially performed as a piano duet by Stravinsky himself and Debussy, long before its orchestral performance. The duet rendition had been in publication for almost a decade before the complete score was ever released. Visualising the sound that would have emanated from these two disparate playing styles — the occasionally blunt approach of Stravinsky contrasted with Debussy’s more delicate touch — is indeed challenging.
The Rite of Spring’s four-hand arrangement has established its own identity, generally being performed on two pianos rather than one, similar to Debussy’s duet compositions. This is due in part to the logistics of playing— the crossing of players’ hands— and to the advantage of movement freedom. Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say recorded a version in which he performs both parts and incorporated elements from the orchestral score, generating textures for “six, eight and even ten hands”.
At St John’s Priory on a Friday morning, the Kazakh-Russian duo Samson Tsoy and Pavel Kolesnikov, clad in flowing white shirts, took to the stage, giving the sense of readiness for a sacred ceremony.
The quadruple-hand rendition echoes the strong contrasts seen in monochrome reproductions of vivid initial pieces. Certain particulars are more noticeable while some completely fade away. While the colourful aural richness of the orchestra is missed, the rhythmic complications of the music are more pronounced. The pure power of the music is lessened as well, but this is somewhat balanced by the piano’s struggling endeavour to reach its sonic boundaries.
Tsoy and Kolesnikov’s consistently engrossing performance seems less like an impersonation of the orchestral composition and more like it’s a Rite of Spring from an alternate reality. Nevertheless, this does not make it any less valuable.