Two Bears Dancing

Lucille Chung & Alessio Bax

Works for Piano Four-Hands by Ligeti and Stravinsky

Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleeker St., Manhattan

Ligeti’s complete works for piano four-hands were at the top of the show, and they include these Hungarian “peasant dances” a la Bartok.  But should pseudo-folk music syncopations be played with Chopin delicacy?  Is the goal of the interpretation (whatever that means) to pretend the peasants are dressed up in tuxes and gowns, or is it like when Elvis stole “Hound Dog” from the loud, black R&B lady Big Mama Thornton, keeping just enough sass to score a Top 40 hit?  I wonder if Ligeti, playing the piece himself, didn’t just lay into those folk dance syncopations, hammering the off-beats like he just took a shot of panlinka.

Second up was Stravinsky’s four-hands reduction of the ballet Petrushka, in which puppets come to life and dance and get into a love triangle.  Although Petrushka (spoiler alert!) dies, the piano four-hands (piano reductions were often used for rehearsal purposes) version of his ballet manages quite well without him up through the end.  Stranvinsky always seems like a bit of a time warp—Romantic, but without tonal gestures or too many regurgitated harmonies—where he is all too eager to forge ahead with new harmonies and rhythms, but can’t let go of the Romantic drive to kill someone off and finish the act.