All Music Guide
Review by Thom Jurek
Americans may be unaware of Piano Duo Post & Mulder, but it hasn't stopped these two women from taking Europe by storm with their courageous repertoire of 20th and now 21st century works. There are no easy composition "classics" on the Private Collection CD; everything here was written by a composer with strident vision and an expansive view of the possible for piano duo. The difficulty in any four-hands composition is not only in synchronization, but also in the depth of the attack. Pianissimo to one artist is different than it is to another in terms of the force used to strike the keys. The composers of these works -- Barbara Monk Feldman, Ron Ford, Bern Alois Zimmerman, Richard Ayres, Maarten van Norden, Eric de Clerq, and Huba de Graaf -- have looked for ways in which to enhance the repertoire for four hands, by rearranging its strengths and weaknesses. Pauline Post and Nora Mulder have chosen their works and composers
carefully here, and it shows: This is one of the most startling piano duet records of the last century. When they attack Ford's "Tema," from 1996, the listener can hear the "crack" as all four hands line up in force, tension, and synchronization. The piece develops from a one-voice, five-note motif, and gradually expands its tonal, harmonic, and pitch ranges gradually from there. Both musicians play the same notes, pedals down the entire time, and as the speed and density of the "single voice" increases, the work becomes a dense language of symbols, suspended without being able to retract them or send them any further than the reach of this increasingly knotted frame. Feldman's piece, "Two Pianos," was originally written for Frederic Rzewski and Marianne Schroeder. It begins with a five-note theme and a dampened triad from inside the piano. From here, a series of modulations happens on slightly augmented chords. There is space between the phrases, but more because of their duration than anything else. Read more (as pdf) >>