The American identical twins, Richard and John Contiguglia, are among the most acclaimed and versatile piano-duos in the world today. Since their London debut in 1962, following which the London Daily Telegraph described their playing as setting “a new standard for this intimate form of music-making.”  Richard and John are now the proprietors of their own recording company, Gemini CD Classics.

Program
 
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (Chorale from Cantata No. 147)              J.S. Bach
          (Transcribed for two pianos by Myra Hess)                                      (1685-1750)
 
Andante and Variations, Op. 46                                     Robert Schumann
                                                                                                                            (1810-1856)
Finale from Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony
       (transcribed for two pianos by Franz Liszt)
                                                                                    Ludwig van Beethoven
                                                                                                                            (1770-1827)
                                                                                                                         Franz Liszt
                                                                                                                            (1811-1886)
 
                                 Presto – Allegro ma non troppo – Tempo I, Allegro – Vivace –
                                Adagio cantabile – Allegro assai – Presto – Recitativo –
                                Allegro – Allegro assai vivace alla marcia – Andante maestoso –
                                Adagio ma non troppo ma devoto – Allegro energico –
                                Allegro ma non tanto – Poco adagio – Poco allegro stringendo
                                   il tempo sempre più allegro – Prestissimo
 

Intermission

 
Fantasy on George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess                    Percy Grainger
                                                                                                                            (1881-1961)
                                                                                                            George Gershwin
                                                                                                                            (1898-1937)
 
 
 
 Program Notes
 Symphony No. 9 (Choral), Op. 125, for two pianos    –    Beethoven-Liszt
                                                                                Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
                                                                                                       Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

 
            Not only the most popular of Beethoven’s Symphonies, but probably the most popular orchestral work ever written, Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony has claimed the attention of other composers almost as much as that of the general public, following its first performance in Vienna in 1824.  Although by no means the first attempt to transcribe the work for the piano, Liszt’s two-piano arrangement of the 9^th in many ways changed the entire art of piano transcription. 
 
            Unlike Czerny and others, whose piano transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies were manifestly made for home consumption, Liszt fashioned his versions with an eye on the audiences who expected his alchemy with ‘the queen of instruments’ to turn the originals into idiomatic, piano compositions.  In fact, during his years of active concertizing in the 1830’s, one of the most often performed works on Liszt’s programs was his transcription of Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony.  At the request of his publishers, Liszt set about the task of transcribing all of Beethoven’s Symphonies for piano solo, a task that he completed in 1865.  The challenge of setting the Chorale Finale of the 9^th for ten fingers, an intractable one, it seemed to him at first, resulted in the only transcription for two pianos that he made of any of the Symphonies.  While he eventually did prepare a piano solo version of the 9^th, much of the vocal material had to be omitted.  It is really a reminder of how much better the two-piano version is.
 
            What makes the two-piano transcription of the 9^th so special is the way in which miraculous effects are achieved on the two pianos by being faithful to the resources of the instruments, without ever losing touch with the spirit of the original.      
 
            The Finale begins with a terrifying intrusion on the sublime radiance of the preceding Adagio, whereupon phrases from the earlier movements pass before the listener in the composer’s quest for the music of his Ode To Joy.  When it finally appears, the theme is first presented in unison by piano two, followed immediately by simple variations on the two pianos.  After reaching a brilliant climax, the music is interrupted by another terrifying outburst, followed by a ‘vocal recitative’ in piano 1, whereupon a series of vocal and instrumental variations unfold.  These include a military march and two double fugues of stunning complexity and brilliance.  Finally a coda, wherein music of a child-like round and slow, ‘vocal’ episodes alternate, brings this unique Finale to its sudden, Prestissimo conclusion.
 
While Liszt’s two-piano transcription of Beethoven’s 9^th elicited extravagant praise from musicians of the day, such as Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Camille Saint-Saens, it had to be rediscovered in the 20^th Century by the Contiguglias, who gave the transcription its modern-day premiere in London’s

  
Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1972 and who made the first recording ever of it for Connoisseur Society Records, a recording that won a grand prix from the Liszt Society of Budapest in the first record competition of the Society’s history in 1975.  Vladimir Horowitz, in an interview with the New York Times, expressed his regret at never having performed Liszt’s transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies in public.  “These are the greatest works for the piano, tremendous works.  But they are ‘sound’ works.  For me the piano is the orchestra.  I like to imitate the orchestra.  Every note of those symphonies is in these Liszt works.”     One might add that the myriad details of the orchestral, choral and solo parts of the 9^th Symphony are clearer in the two piano transcription than in the orchestral original.
 
            In the process of studying this unique transcription, the greatest of all two-piano compositions, we believe, we discovered several places where Liszt omitted material from the Beethoven original, which could have been incorporated into the two-piano score, particularly in the wind parts of the final two movements.  We have added them in the belief that these additions would please Liszt as well as our listeners.  We have a new recording of our current performance of the 9^th Symphony available now on the Gemini CD Classics label.  Consult our website, www.duopianistscontiguglia.com for further information.
 
Fantasy on George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess       -            Percy Grainger
                                                                                                       (1881-1961)
                                                                                             George Gershwin
                                                                                                       (1898-1937)

 
          Porgy & Bess is almost certainly the greatest musical composition ever written by an American and Percy Grainger was one of the first important musicians to recognize this fact.  Little more than a decade after the Broadway premiere of a woefully truncated version of the opera, Grainger published his two-piano Fantasy.  It is not surprising that the Australian-born composer, Percy Grainger, should have been attracted to the music of the American, George Gershwin.  Both composers were deeply influenced by folk-music traditions, Grainger, mainly by the folk songs of Scandinavia and the British Isles, and Gershwin, by the jazz and Gospel music of Black America.  Both aspired to a contrapuntally complex style with acknowledged ties to J.S. Bach.  Both wrote music that blurred the categories of ‘classical’ and ‘pop.’  While Gershwin, himself, actually set much of his own vocal and orchestral music for piano (or for two pianos), he never made a piano transcription of any of the songs from his grand opera, Porgy & Bess.  But, interestingly, he did create an orchestral suite from the opera, which Ira Gershwin entitled “Catfish Row.”
 
            Gershwin’s music transforms a tale of love, murder and human perseverance among the poor residents of Charleston’s Catfish Row into an epic drama that transcends time and place.  Grainger’s remarkable re-creation of Gershwin’s opera not only makes pianistic what was essentially orchestral and vocal, but also gives, in under 25 minutes, a very satisfying emotional traversal of the entire opera.
 
            In addition to material from the Introduction and the Finale of the opera, the Fantasy includes settings, imaginatively knit together, of nine songs, perhaps the opera’s most familiar ‘hits,’ in Grainger’s, not Gershwin’s, order.  The opening and closing sections of the Fantasy parallel the opening and closing of the opera.  Serena’s passionate aria, My Man’s Gone Now, the Fantasy’s first song, represents a kind of emotional summing-up of the action that preceded it in Scene 1 of the opera, the crap game and Crown’s murder of Robbins.  Sportin’ Life mocks the fundamentalist beliefs of Catfish Row’s Christian’s in It Ain’t Necessarily So, followed immediately in the Fantasy by the chorus’s consoling spiritual to Clara, Clara, Don’t You Be Down-hearted.  Normalcy and joy in community life find expression in The Strawberry Call, Summertime, Clara’s lullaby to her sleeping child, and Oh, I Can’t Sit Down, the chorus’s exuberant response to the Kittiwah excursion.  Porgy’s transformation by Bess’s love is expressed in one of opera’s greatest love duets, Bess, You is My Woman, Now, and his renewed sense of self in the jaunty Oh, I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin.  The opera’s and Fantasy’s final song, Porgy’s quasi spiritual, Oh, Lawd, I’m On My Way, underlines our hero’s resolve to find Bess in what has by now become Gershwin’s epic tragedy of love and loss.
 
Andante and Variations, Op. 46                Robert Schumann
                                                                                     (1810-1856)
 
            To his publishers Schumann referred to these elegiac Variations as “a somewhat delicate plant”.  He might have added that the “plant” had matured from an earlier ‘growth’ which he referred to as his “Quintet Variations” for two pianos, 2 celli and horn.  Problems of ensemble and, probably, of balance, resulting from the original scoring, prompted Schumann, at Mendelssohn’s suggestion, to arrange the set for 2 pianos alone.  It was this version that was published late in 1843, the year of its composition, as Andante and Variations, Op.46.  There are significant differences in the content of the two versions.  The earlier version for 2 pianos, celli and horn was not published until 1893, long after Schumann’s death.  There can be little doubt which version Schumann preferred.  The first public performance of the Andante and Variations was given in Vienna by Clara Schumann and Mendelssohn on August 19, 1843.  Robert and Clara performed it together in Bremen in 1849.
 
            The Andante espressivo Theme is followed by 9 Variations, a reprise of the original Theme and a Coda.  What is first apparent to listeners is the antiphonal character of the set, one pianist’s responding to the other’s phrases in a dialogue that adds particular poignancy to the tenderness and passion of the music and that makes a live performance especially interesting to watch, as well as to hear.  Of course, when the two pianists play together, the added sonority and merging of textures complicates the exchange.  The moods change dramatically from the intimacy of Schumann’s ‘Eusebius’ persona (the Theme, Variations 1, 3, 5 and 6) to the more demonstrative, ‘Florestan’ one (Variations 2, 4, 7, 8 and 9).  The whole set is tied together in an architectural frame, without noticeable breaks, that gives it a sense of grandeur and structural importance.  The key of the set, B-flat major, is altered only twice, for Variations 5 and 8.  B-flat Minor provides a solemn tone for the funereal Variation 5 and E-flat major for the imitative horn-calls of Variation 8.      
 
              One cannot help but feel that the intertwining of the lines of the two pianos in the concluding measures of the Andante and Variations is meant to suggest the mutual love of Clara and Robert, especially when one thinks how they must have responded to the experience of performing this very personal work together.
                                                                  Program notes by Richard and John Contiguglia