Alexei Lubimov, Yury Martynov - Mozart: Pieces for Two Fortepianos (2012)

One way to look at Mozart's keyboard music is to consider the fortepiano as basically an extension of the harpsichord, with the music increasingly but only incrementally making use of the new instrument's additional capabilities. Another outlook, less common but perhaps gaining ground, is that the piano marked a stark break from the earlier sound concept. This recording by Russian pianists Alexei Lubimov and Yury Martynov -- a contemporary music specialist and a historically oriented performer, which is an unusual combination in itself -- marks an extreme version of the latter view. Using a pair of period instruments by unspecified makers, Lubimov and Martynov offer Mozart's slender output of music for two pianos (strangely, he left several pieces in this medium unfinished for no good reason), augmented by an arrangement of the Piano Quartet in E flat major, K. 493, by one Johann Pratsch. Lubimov and Martynov don't exploit the dynamic range of the fortepiano so much as its range of articulation, which is varied between the two keyboards in striking ways. The Sonata for two pianos in D major, K. 448, is one of the "symphonic" pieces of Mozart keyboard music, with melodies unfolding over layered arpeggios that sound as though they're drawn from string writing. The work has never sounded as orchestral as it does here. The piano quartet arrangement is really brilliantly chosen for this program, with the accompanying piano, which switches off between the two, creating a variety of very string-like sounds. The most intriguing quality of this recording is that even the various buzzes and other non-tonal sounds characteristic of early pianos somehow become incorporated into the music-making; the players create a sound with enough dimension to encompass it. This is certainly not the only way to play Mozart's piano music, even on fortepianos, but if you're after something new and different, by all means listen.