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The pianists Roberto Hidalgo and Marc Peloquin have been
performing as a two-piano team only since 1996. If their
recital at Merkin Concert Hall on Thursday night is
representative, one can hope that these gifted, musically
curious pianists, who also have active solo careers, will keep
their partnership going as well. This program of 20th-century
Mexican and American works for two pianos was
fascinating, and the performances were first-rate.The opening work, "Danza del Hombre" by Carlos Chavez,
composed in 1926, is from the ballet symphony "Cabalas
de Vapor." The ballet explores the tension in Mexico during
the 1920's between the sensuous traditional world of the
tropics, and modern industrial society. The music captures
that tension. Undulant rhythms and bits of folk tunes evoke
the old Mexico; punchy dissonance, polyhedral harmony
and jerky contrapuntal writing conjure up modern times.
The pianists played with a rhythmic incisiveness and cool
expressivity that made it seem as fresh as anything written
in that adventuresome decade."Calicos y Palmas," composed in 1990 by Carlos Sanchez
Gutierrez, is a beguiling exploration of blurry harmonies
and rippling Minimalist rhythms. But coming after the
Chavez, which was so musically precise, it sounded a little
rambling.Copland's famous "El Salòn México" was performed here
in a transcription for two pianos by Leonard Bernstein. The
original orchestral version obviously provides more variety
of timbre and richness of color. But the two-piano version
makes the jerky dance rhythms and jabbing harmonies of
the music more startling. In preparing this transcription,
Bernstein was owning up, rather charmingly, to one of his
sources for "West Side Story."The second half of the program was given to George
Crumb's 45-minute "Zeitgeist," six tableaux for two
amplified pianos, Book I, composed in 1987. In
accordance with the score, microphones were placed in
each piano close to the sound boards, and the pianists
employed the requisite empty drinking glasses and
rubbed-edged squeegees to stroke the strings. This may
sound gimmicky, but Mr. Crumb knew how to get all
manner of sounds from the pianos: ethereal evocations of
strummed harps, wild banshee shrieks, metallic clankings
- whole junkyard symphonies of sounds.That said, to respond to this piece you must disengage the
part of your brain that expects music to have structure and
thematic development. There is content here: spiraling
figurations chase one another in the "Two Harlequins"
movement; vaguely Indian melodies come and go over a
sustained drone tone in the "Monochord" movement; "The
Realm of Morpheus" could be a homage to Debussy's
piano prelude "Fireworks." But the murky, motionless
episodes go on far too long.Yet the performance was impressive and beautiful. Mr.
Hidalgo and Mr. Peloquin had to sit on benches boosted
with phone books to be high enough to lean into the piano
and perform all the required operations on the strings. I
hope they got good massages as well as congratulations
afterward: all that stretching must be hard on the back.© The New York Times
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