A delightfully frothy performance of Mozart’s Variations in D major K. 501 makes a promising start to this program of variations for two pianos. Dale Bartlett and Jean Marchand, a Montréal-based duo, play with great delicacy and rhythmic verve, a particularly effective combination in such filigree-laden music. They etch out a firmer tone in the minor-key variation to underline the highly chromatic counterpoint, and this rightly becomes the emotional crux of the piece.
The pianists beef up their sound for Brahms’ Haydn Variations, though the increase in volume brings a decrease in energy. Rhythms that should leap exuberantly in Variation V, for example, are weighed down with heavy accents, and all too often the music moves note-by-note rather than in phrases. Michael Free’s liner notes remind us that these Variations originally were conceived for two pianos, though Bartlett and Marchand always seem to have the sonorities of the orchestral version in mind. Martha Argerich and Alexandre Rabinovitch make a considerably more compelling case for this as piano music, and their Teldec recording is energetic almost to a fault.
In Saint-Saëns’ Variations on a Theme by Beethoven, Bartlett and Marchand are not so heavy-handed, though occasional rhythmic stodginess robs some of the variations of their humorous charm. Happily, Reger’s brilliant Mozart Variations come off better. Even if fleeter tempos might have brought out more of the essential weirdness of Variations IV and V, the pianists do a very good job of clarifying the music’s complex textures. The concluding fugue builds to an appropriately grandiose climax, where at last Bartlett and Marchand’s enthusiastically weighty accents are put to good use. This is an intelligent and nicely varied program; too bad the performances are so variable.
