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Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

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[ODRCD301] Stravinsky - Hindemith - Ravel
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Duo Miho & Masumi Hio Piano Four Hands Stravinsky Le Sacre du Printemps Hindemith Sonata (for Piano Four Hands) Ravel Rhapsodie Espagnole
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Page 1: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

Duo Miho & Masumi HioPiano Four Hands

StravinskyLe Sacre du Printemps

HindemithSonata (for Piano Four Hands)

RavelRhapsodie Espagnole

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Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971)

Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps (1912-13, revised 1947)01 I Première Partie - L’adoration de la Terre: Introduction (The Adoration of the Earth: Introduction) 2’5602 II Les Augures Printaniers: Danses des Adolescentes (The Augurs of Spring: Dances of the Young Girls) 3’1003 III Jeu du Rapt (Mock Abduction) 1’1304 IV Rondes Printanières (Spring Rounds) 3’2405 V Jeux des Cités Rivales (Games of the Two Rival Tribes) 1’2206 VI Cortège du Sage (Procession of the Oldest and Wisest One [the Sage]) 0’5307 VII Adoration de la Terre (Le Sage) (The Kiss of the Earth (The Oldest and Wisest One) [The Sage] 0’3208 VIII Danse de la Terre (The Dancing Out of the Earth) 1’2109 I Seconde Partie - Le Sacrifice: Introduction (The Sacrifice: Introduction) 4’1510 II Cercles Mystérieux des Adolescentes (Mystic Circle of the Young Girls) 2’2811 III Glorification de l’Élue (The Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One) 1’3612 IV Evocation des Ancêtres (Evocation of the Ancestors) 0’4013 V Action Rituelle des Ancêtres (Ritual Action of the Ancestors) 4’0614 VI Danse Sacrale (L’Élue) (Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One)) 4’16

Paul Hindemith - Sonata (für Klavier vierhändig) (1938)15 I Mäßig bewegt - Ruhig - Wie am Anfang - Ruhiger, feierlich 5’1816 II Lebhaft 2’5717 III Ruhig bewegt - Sehr lebhaft - Im früheren Zeitmaß - Wie am Anfang des Satzes 8’03

Maurice Ravel - Rhapsodie espagnole (1907)18 I Prélude à la nuit. Modéré 4’0619 II Malagueña. Assez vif 1’5820 III Habanera. En demi-teinte et d’un rhythme las 2’4921 IV Feria. Assez vif 6’22

Le Sacre du Printemps

Duo Miho & Masumi Hio, piano four hands

TT 63’51

Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963)

Sonata (für Klavier vierhändig)

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

Rhapsodie espagnole

Page 3: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

Two players at one piano: the quintes-sential picture of do-

mestic music making. But if we look closely at that picture and imagine what music is being played, it is unlikely to come from the 20th century. The reasons for this are complex but in-clude social factors - music in the home increasingly being supplied by record-ed rather than live means - and directly musical ones - the tendency for musical language in the 20th cen-tury to focus on specialist performers to the virtual exclusion of the amateur.

Perhaps of all the works of the 20th century, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps is among the least likely to be suited to a domestic setting. It was written for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, synonymous with performance

spectacle, and its notorious premiere in 1913 was a highly public scandal and continues to be the most talked about first performance of all. This sort of uproar does not transfer easily to the home. And if for much of its first century Le Sacre has not so often been danced as a ballet, as performed as a concert work, it has become an orchestral showcase, an essential proving ground of virtuosity and display for orchestras and conductors around the world.

What then do we hear when the piece is played by two players at one piano? Stripped of its orchestral co-lour, the first shock is prob-ably hearing the famous opening high bassoon re-placed by something more neutral, perhaps akin to seeing a colourful work of art in a black and white re-

production. At this point we might be tempted to agree with Pierre Monteux (the work’s first conductor) that to hear the work with-out its orchestral colour is to lose one of its main at-tractions. We may also miss some of the complex layer-ing provided by the 100 or more players of the large orchestra, but we also gain from the intensity and pre-cision of two performers. As the work progresses, the repeating melodic cells, for example in Rondes Print-anières, become mesmeris-ing without the distractions of instrumental colour. In-deed the piece can seem even more radical as the percussive edge of ham-mers hitting strings un-leashes the extraordinary rhythms of the final Danse Sacrale. It therefore be-comes possible to hear the work afresh, free from the trappings of the orchestral

show-piece it has become.

Hearing the work played on a piano, we are certainly brought closer to the com-position of the piece and the sonorities that Stravin-sky himself will first have experienced as he compo- sed. Stravinsky worked on the four-hand version of the work at the same time as the orchestral score and it was the piano version which was published first (1913), the orchestral score only appearing in print lat-er (1921). The piano score therefore preserves some of Stravinsky’s original no-tations which were altered in later revisions of the or-chestral score. We are also brought much closer to the experience of those who first heard the work, before that notorious pre-miere, including of course, Diaghilev himself, Mon-teux and the first dancers.

Page 4: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

The crisper, drier sound world of the piano version of Le Sacre can certainly sound more authentically Stravinskian than orches-tral opulence. Significantly Stravinsky’s next collabo-ration with Diaghilev, Les Noces, was first scored for orchestra (1917) but its fi-nal version was for four pia-nos and percussion (1923). The piano duet version of Le Sacre therefore connects the sound of these two pieces, which are in many ways the most Russian of his larger works. It is also no surprise to find the piano playing a large role in his output of the following de-cade as he establishes his neoclassical credentials, in works like the Concerto for piano and wind instruments (1923-4), Sonata for piano (1924), Serenade in A for pi-ano (1925) and Capriccio for piano and orchestra (1928-9). The piano duet version

of the Le Sacre therefore en-ables us to hear the work through the ears of the composer of the final ver-sion of Les Noces and his lat-er music, rather than those of the composer of the ear-lier Firebird. It has a ring of authenticity about it which means it is best understood not as an arrange- ment of the orchestral score, and thereby a convenient, if demanding, way of play-ing the piece at home, but as an alternative ver-sion of the work in its own right, able to take its own place in the concert hall.

Hindemith’s Sonate (für Klavier vierhändig) (1938) is part of his extended cycle of more than 20 sonatas, written between 1935 and 1955, for virtually every or-chestral instrument. There is a utilitarian function in providing repertoire for, often neglected, solo in-

Page 5: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

struments and in this case for a traditionally domestic medium. The worthiness of this project, with the taint of Gebrauchsmusik, has led to a degree of criti-cal disdain. The sonatas have many features in com-mon: clear tonal structures, which nevertheless con-tain a wide range of harmo-nies both triadic and non-triadic, clear forms with a strong basis in repeating thematic structures and many rhythmic, melodic and contrapuntal features informed by Baroque mu-sic. It is however a mistake to undervalue the individu-al qualities of each sonata.

The first movement of the piano duet sonata has a clear sonata form with two contrasted thematic ideas, both very typical of Hin-demith’s melodic inven-tion - the first a flowing melodic line and the sec-

ond whose more solemn and formal character is ful-ly revealed at the conclu-sion of the movement. The movement is clearly root-ed on E but with a strong role for the subdominant A.

The second movement is a lively and highly character-ful scherzo, centred on C sharp. Much of the rhythmic character of the main sec-tion stems from the use of a 9 beat pattern against the alla breve metre. This sort of technique is not dissimi-lar to some of Stravinsky’s rhythmic procedures in Le Sacre, but here Hindemith works within a much more Germanic sense of relation-ship between form and ma-terial. The rhythmic shifts contribute much to the playfulness of the move-ment, something which is also reflected in the ton-al structure, exemplified by the harmonic twist at

the end of the movement when an apparently final cadence on B flat minor is abruptly replaced with a C sharp minor chord.

The final movement is tri-partite (slow-fast-slow) with the slow sections beginning away from, but eventually cadencing on, the tonic E, and the middle section is a compound time moto per-petuo which shares themat-ic material with the enclos-ing slow sections. The main material of the slow sec-tions is perhaps the most referentially Baroque in the whole work and this is at its clearest at the beginning of the final section where it is presented fugally, not through the traditional pat-tern of tonic and dominant entries but in a chromati-cally descending sequence which also serves to move the fugue subject from the treble register to the bass.

Like Le Sacre, Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole was first played as a piano duet (1907) before it was orchestrated the following year. The relationship between orchestral and piano versions of Ravel’s music is a fluid one and as he was a supreme colourist in both media, it is easy to claim an equal validity for both versions of a work.

If Hindemith is primarily concerned with an abstract working out of material, and Stravinsky with a ges-tural (primarily rhythmic) language related to the physicality of dance, Ravel’s music is altogether more evocative. Possibly because Ravel had not actually visit-ed Spain at this time, there is a strong dream-like qual-ity to the evocation; some-thing essentially exotic. The third movement, Ha-banera, (originally written

Page 6: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

12 years earlier as part of a work for two pianos) utilis-es the idiom which follow-ing Carmen had become the most potent sym-bol of Spanish exoticism.

Ravel’s music may share with Stravinsky the feature of repeating ostinato pat-terns, but they are used to completely different ef-fect. The falling four note figure, spanning a dimin-

ished fourth, which opens the work and dominates the first movement is a far cry from the percussive pat-terns of the Stravinsky. It sets up a subtle metric and harmonic ambiguity full of hypnotic charm. The sec-ond movement has repeat-ing patterns which make clear reference to Spanish dance and this is taken fur-ther in the ensuing Haba-

nera, which combines the familiar repeating habanera rhythm with a C sharp which continues almost through-out the movement. The fi-nal movement is the most extended; it again makes strong references to Span-ish dance patterns and in-cludes a slower middle sec-tion, ultimately developing its material in combination with the return of the open-

ing falling four-note figure.

These three works could hardly be more different in origin. They are all, however, four-hand piano music written for more than the private pleasure of the performers. This is music for listeners too.

Hugh Collins Rice

Page 7: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

lauds, and special mention. They are prize winners of several international piano-duo and chamber music com-petitions in Europe and the USA, inc-

luding the “Bradshaw International Competition”, earning them the oppor-

tunity to perform Le Sacre du Printemps in Carnegie Hall, New York.

Their performance activity as a duo began with rec-itals at the former Japan

Bösendorfer Corpor-ation and Sougakudou (Tokyo) in Japan, and has since taken them

to many music festivalsin Austria, Switzer-

land, England and Japan. Their concert performances have been recorded for live broadcast on several occasions for ORF-

Kärnten.

Miho and Masumi Hio were solo piano pupils of Elis-abeth Vaeth-Schadler

and Martyn van den Hoek at the Carinthia State Music Con-servatory (Kärntner Landes-konservatorium) and the Vienna Conservatory (Kon-servatorium Wien). After earning their diplomas as soloists with distinct-ion, they married in 2005, forming a piano duo and have performed together ever since.

While exploring and expanding their duo repert-oire, they pursued a diploma for Piano Duo Per-formance with Bruno Mezzena at the Music Aca-demy of Pescara, Italy, receiving perfect marks,

Page 8: Duo Miho & Masumi Hio - Piano Four Hands

www.odradek-records.com

d Recorded at Studio Odradek, August 2011

Produced by John AndersonSteinway “B” Fabbrini Collection

Piano Technician: Luigi FuscoSound Engineer: Thomas A. LiebermannMastering and Mixing Engineer: Thomas Vingtrinier, Sequenza Studio, Paris.

Artist Photos: Hoshi StudioGraphic Design: Alice SRL, Pescara

℗ & © 2012 Odradek Records, LLCAll rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance, and broad-casting of this sound recording are strictly prohibited.

Program notes by Hugh Collins Rice are licensed under a Creative Com-mons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.odradek-records.com


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