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Published: Tuesday, 26 November 2024 at 12:40 PM
Yuletide Treats (Duo Pleyel) (Review)
Yuletide Treats
Works by Handel, Liszt, J Strauss I, J Strauss II and Tchaikovsky
Duo Pleyel
Linn Records CKD757 56:36 mins
Clip: Handel – Messiah, HWV 56 Hallelujah (Duo Pleyel / Linn)
Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya and Richard Egarr name themselves after the 1848 Pleyel they own, as the four-hand entity Duo Pleyel. But the instrument on which they play here is a Chris Maene straight-strung concert grand, which allows for a particularly crystalline sound. And they are currently half way through a recording project on it of all Beethoven’s symphonies in his student Carl Czerny’s four-hand arrangement. That same Czerny also makes an appearance on this album.
Duo Pleyel’s Yuletide offering is the latest in a long tradition of convivial Christmas music, but their programme is unusually recherché. It begins with three sections of Liszt’s Christmas Tree Suite, each of which has an artless simplicity which goes straight to the heart. Czerny’s arrangements of Handel’s ‘Unto us a child is born’ and ‘Halleluja’ exude a ringingly celebratory atmosphere, which transports us back to when George II felt impelled to stand up in honour of its premiere in 1743.
Duo Pleyel admit that they added some ‘tinsel and Glühwein’ to Strauss II’s encomium to the Danube, and also to Strauss the elder’s Radetsky-Marsch: it’s amazing what a few trills and tremolos can do. But the pièce de résistance is their arrangement of Eduard Langer’s take on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite which was made at the same time as the ballet score’s first appearance. Every one of the little musical vignettes is delectable, and it’s nice to learn from the internet that a mirliton is a West-Indian fruit, as well as being one of the seductive figures which swirl through Tchaikovsky’s penultimate dance. A Yuletide treat indeed. Michael Church