Mazurkas/Polonaises/Concertos

Louis Lortie & Hélène Mercier (pianos)

After more than twenty years since their last recording of piano duets on Chandos, Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier here come together again to perform works by Rachmaninoff.

The Symphonic Dances was the last work to which Rachmaninoff gave an opus number, and he arranged it himself for two pianos. He was separated from his native Russia, where the Soviets had banned his music. In this work he thinks beyond himself as a Russian and, as in the Suite, Op. 17, into the world to come. In both works, amidst a gallery of musical references and quotations, he juxtaposes passages of his own music (from the First and Third Symphonies, The Bells, the Vespers, etc.) with music by composers he particularly admired (such as Richard Strauss, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert). The combination of material may be seen as his exhibition of the nineteenth-century musical world.

The album also features the Fantaisie (or Suite) for two pianos, Op. 5, in which poetic fragments in the score reveals that each movement for Rachmaninoff carried a world of secreted meaning.

Rachmaninov:
 Suite No. 1 (Fantaisie-tableaux), Op. 5
 Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 17
 Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

"[Mercier] has a chameleon-like ability to blend, spar or float in and out of focus as the need arises…[their choice of instruments] allow one to hear the inner workings of these busy scores in crisp detail and bright, resonant colours"
Gramophone Magazine - November 2015

"Both pianists are as one, thanks to the years of performing together, which is evident in their fine musical understanding and precise synchronised attack."
Pianist Magazine - June 2016 ****