Ashkenazy Father/Son!
I recently reviewed the piano/Cello music of the Brendel’s, father and son. Now… here’s Vladimir Ashkenazy, pianist and conductor doing 2-piano music with his son, Vovka. How nice is that…
While conducting still takes up a major portion of Ashkenazy’s time each season, he continues to devote himself to the piano, as well as many other television and educational projects.
On this CD, Vladimir Ashkenazy returns to the piano and is joined by his son for beautiful French `Impressionism’ piano duets by Debussy and Ravel. Much of the music on this disc is rarely recorded because of its technical difficulty, including the world-premiere of a new arrangement of Debussy’s Jeux. Ashkenazy has a special affinity with French music and won a Grammy® Award for his recording of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. The 2-piano Ashkenazy team show us their affection for the French repertoire in this new album. Vovka Ashkenazy is himself a well-known pianist and teacher who has made critically-acclaimed recordings for several labels including Decca and DG. Father and son have recorded together previously the Rachmaninov Piano Transcriptions and Chopin Piano Music.
Included in this collection is the Ravel arrangement for two pianos of the Rapsodie Espganol. The last track is the famous “La Valse”, depicting in the beginning clouds that obscure the music, only to eventually have the clouds clear and allowing us to hear a full Viennese-style waltz in all its glory. While this is quite different from the orchestral version of the same work, it provides new insight into the origin of this music.
Here’s a video of Deborah Marchetti, violin, & Vovka Ashkenazy, piano playing Danse Russe from Stravinskys’s ballet Petrushka: