Sergei Rachmaninov: Works for piano Duet: After more than twenty years since their last recording of piano duets, Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier come together again in this recording to perform works by Rachmaninoff. We get t enjoy the following selections: Suite #1 Suite #2 Symphonic dances Performed by Louis Lortie (piano), and Hélène Mercier (piano) 
The ‘Symphonic Dances’ was the last work to which Rachmaninoff gave an opus number, and he arranged it himself for two pianos. He was separated from his native Russia, where the Soviets had banned his music. In this work he thinks beyond himself as a Russian and, as in the Suite, Op. 17, into the world to come. In both works, Rachmaninov includes passages of his own music (from the First and Third Symphonies, ‘The Bells’, the Vespers, etc.) with music by composers he particularly admired (such as Richard Strauss, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert). The combination of material may be seen as his exhibition of the nineteenth-century musical world. The album also features the ‘Fantaisie’ (or Suite) for two pianos, Op. 5, in which poetic fragments in the score reveals that each movement for Rachmaninoff carried a world of secreted meaning. Here is the Barcarolle from Six Duos Op. 11 by Sergei Rachmaninov, as played by Martha Argerich and Lylia Zilberstein:
