The
Long Duo, sisters
Beatrice and Christina Long, have discovered three rarities that might appeal to fans of the
Poulenc and
Bartók double piano concertos. Granted, it's a small audience in relation to the larger realm of all piano concertos or mid-20th century music, but fans of those might find these worth hearing at least once as well. Dana Suesse's career followed a path similar to that of
George Gershwin, beginning with composing popular songs and then seeking education in more formal and traditional structures to produce concert works. Her Concerto in E minor -- of which this is the premiere recording -- shows some of her inexperience with form, particularly in the first movement, where it is somewhat hard to follow ideas. The second movement is more post-Romantic, rhapsodic in nature, and the third is very reminiscent of
Ravel's Concerto in G. The final movement does some wrapping up of a sort with themes from the first and second movements brought back. Suesse essentially self-taught herself orchestration, which seemed to come more facilely to her than structure in this work. The concerto by Harl McDonald (in its first modern recording), by comparison, is much easier to follow. The first two movements have that sound of the melodramatic concerto as composed for films (e.g., the Warsaw Concerto), while the third incorporates several Latin-American ideas, especially a rhumba rhythm in the main theme and a malagueña episode in the last half of the movement. The concerto by
Ralph Vaughan Williams is actually a re-working of his Piano Concerto, and hasn't proved any more popular in the two-piano form than the original. This is probably because it really isn't what people expect from
Vaughan Williams. It's much more harmonically adventuresome, more percussive, and more aggressive than his pastoral music, and the traces of folk music have to be sought out more actively by the listener. This is not to say it's poorly written. Its texture is dense, but its construction is sound, and it does carry a sufficiency of interest to both the performers and the audience. None of these concertos pit the soloists adversarily against the orchestra. The Eskisehir Greater Municipality Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Patrick Souillot, sounds as professional as many much larger and well-known orchestras. The
Long Duo does an admirable job in shining a light on these unknown concertos.