Most piano duet arrangements were meant for the home rather than the concert hall. When you sight-read orchestral reductions at the piano, your physical involvement with the material “fills in” the missing instrumental color. Even with skillful four-hand “de-orchestrations” like Max Reger’s of the Bach Orchestral Suites, listeners run the risk of “registral fatigue”. In the main, the Speidel-Trenkner piano duo circumvents these limitations through canny pianistic means. In the C major Suite’s Forlane, for example, the oboe’s hornpipe-like melody bounces on a featherweight accompaniment. The Menuetto, Bourée, and Passepied easily glide from one dance to the next, with lots of gorgeous soft playing. The duo brings infectious brio and dash to the B minor Suite’s dance movements, and puts a lyrical imprint on the Overture’s grandiose outer sections. The Fourth Suite is virile and spirited, but the duo wields four heavy hands throughout much of the Third. The famous Air’s long lines barely sustain on a piano–let alone at the pianist’s narcoleptic tempo.
Reger transcriptions of three Bach organ classics fill out the discs. While the great St. Anne Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major and the C minor Passacaglia lend themselves well to the duet medium, the D minor Toccata and Fugue loses its improvisatory momentum with a second player in tow. The sound is resonant, metallic, and not especially colorful. Excellent annotations.
