Beethoven: Works For Piano Four Hands
Long-time duo partners Peter Hill and Benjamin Frith mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth with this survey of his complete output for piano four hands. Works from his early years in Bonn and from the period of the 'Eroica' Symphony, a decade later, are joined by a unique masterpiece from the year before his death. In 1826 Beethoven was persuaded to publish an arrangement for piano duet of the Grosse Fuge, finale of the String Quartet in Bb Op. 130, which had astonished and bewildered listeners at the Quartet's first performance. The result is a tour de force of pianistic virtuosity, the equivalent for the nineteenth century of Stravinsky's piano duet version of The Rite of Spring- centerpiece of Hill and Frith's most recent Delphian album - and like the Stravinsky nothing less than the recreation of a masterpiece in another medium.
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