MUSIC 4 HANDS PERFORMED ON TWO PIANOS

Maki Namekawa & Dennis Russell Davies (pianos)

Glass, P:
 Six Scenes from ‘Les Enfants Terribles'

Reich:
 Piano Phase

"Although the booklet-notes claim that Glass's music has 'long resisted interpretation', that is exactly what Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa do, offering a breadth of tempo, dynamic and emotional contrasts that belie the composer's reputation as a mere dispenser of arpeggios. Reich's Piano Phrase (1967), however, requires another approach. Unfolding as a progressive phase shift where repeating unison lines gradually break apart, the music's only room for personal input is the starting tempo. The same qualities of rhythmic assuredness and textural clarity that Davies brings to the conductor's podium are consistently present here."
Gramophone Magazine - September 2006