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Airborne Fingers
A BPSE lunchtime recital by
Harvey Dagul and Isobel Beyer,
praised by MALCOLM TROUP
Seldom can there have been a more capacity audience -- nor a more responsive one -- than that at the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe's fourhanded lunchtime piano recital at London's St Martin-in-the-Fields [10 August 2010] by the veteran Harvey Dagul and Isobel Beyer Piano Duo. Their airborne fingers chased each other up and down the keyboard as nimbly as ever, trading delicate nuances in perfect synchronization and timing, though never forcing the tone to that percussive clatter of so many a two-piano team; all going to reassert their credentials as Founders of the British Piano Duet and Duo Association and explain why their recordings of a largely self-discovered repertoire have won such laurels over the years.
Their savy art of programme-building refused to be knocked sideways by St Martin's ever-dwindling time-slot for such noonday musicales -- now at a niggardly thirty-five minutes -- even if, to do so, their programme had to rely on single movements. Not that their printed programme told us much -- that was left to Harvey Dagul who, microphone in hand, provided us with whatever background information he considered relevant. They began with Schumann's 12 Piano Pieces for Children Small and Large, Op 85, an equally irresistible four-handed sequel to the composer's ever-popular Album for the Young (which title it originally shared) -- as if written with our two 'ever young at heart' duettists in mind...
Copyright © 15 August 2010
Malcolm Troup,
London UK
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