The old expression “two hands are better than one” certainly applies to playing a keyboard instrument. But what about four hands? Or six hands? From the Baroque to the present day, composers have been seduced by the sound of several keyboards. Whether it’s harpsichords, pianos or organs, dozens of digits playing on many keyboards is an intoxicating sound.
Baroque composers delighted in the colorful sonorities of multiple keyboard instruments. Giovanni Gabrieli and Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber composed music for multiple organs that were tucked away in church galleries and lofts. The organs engaged in dialogues that created thrilling antiphonal effects. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for a different instrument and composed concertos for two, three and four harpsichords that are still mainstays of the repertoire. During the late Baroque the Spanish composer Antonio Soler must have relished the sound of two organs because his six concertos were written without any instrumental accompaniment.
As might be expected, one of the standout two piano works of the Classical era was by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Sonata for Two Pianos in D major is one of his finest pieces and won fame as one of the works (the Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488 is the other), used by the British Epilepsy Organization to measure brain activity in the “Mozart Effect” study.
The tradition continued in the Romantic era. There’s brilliant music for two pianos by Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms and other composers of the time. Brahms’s famous Variations on a Theme of Haydn may be best known as an orchestral piece, but it was first written as a work for two pianos.
The 20th century saw a groundswell of two piano works. There’s Claude Debussy’s gorgeous En blanc et noir, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s virtuoso Suites for Two Pianos, Francis Poulenc’s delightful Concerto for Two Pianos and many more. For sheer power and color few works can top Bela Bartok’s propulsive Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. But were two pianos enough? Not if you are Steve Reich. His Four Organs and Six Pianos are groundbreaking minimalist masterpieces that push keyboard instruments into unchartered territory.
Our featured release, Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano, has two remarkable pieces for two pianos. In Chiaroscuro, a 1997 work, Corigliano steps outside the traditional two piano formula by having the pianos tuned a quartertone lower than each other. The effect is mesmerizing. Kaleidoscope was written in 1959 and is, in the composer’s words, “high-spirited and full of the energy of youth.”
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by Craig Zeichner
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