One Is Not Enough

One pianist is not enough. That seems to be the consensus when concert quality pianists approach Piazzolla's works. With the exception of what is usually referred to as the Adios Nonino Rhapsody, an expanded version of the piano intro Piazzolla wrote for his quintet pianist, Dante Amicarelli, there are no concert quality solo piano arrangements of Piazzolla's works. But there is no shortage of concert quality piano duet versions of many of his works. Another is added with today's video of a new two piano version of Meditango played by Margarita Harytuinjan and Julia Umrikchina. Significantly, the arrangement is by one of the world's best piano duoist, Gennady Pystin, selected in 2008 as an Honored Artist of Russia for his contributions to duo piano music. Regrettably, I can find no information about the pianists. Although the audio quality of the video is not very good, they are obviously talented pianists and I am amazed that they can remain synchronized so well with the "head-to-tail" piano arrangement they have been assigned. Normally, duo pianos are set up "tail-to-tail" so the two pianists can see each other over the keyboards and thus have visual cues which help synchronization. You can also hear them in a very fast duo piano version of Libertango which I would venture to guess was also arranged by Pystin.

If you are interested in duo piano versions of Piazzolla works, I suggest you review the work of Duoalleviguidi, Isolda Crespi Rubio and Ingrid Sotolarova, Martha Argerich and Eduardo Hubert,and Emanuel Ax and Pablo Ziegler. I would also point out that there are many excellent arrangements of Piazzolla works which fall easily within the talent of intermediate skilled pianists available from Alma Music. Most of the YouTube videos of Piazzolla played on solo piano come directly from the Alma scores.

If the Meditango video does not appear below, click here.



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