Interview, Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy on Piano Duos by Schubert and Desyatnikov

Pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy make their duo debut on Harmonia Mundi with a mirror-like programme - two Schubert works for piano duet, book-ending a newly-written work by Leonid Desyatnikov. His Trompe-l'œil was commissioned as a response to the Fantasie D940, but reflects aspects of both.

It's a selection of repertoire that might reasonably be described as a little off the beaten track, but which is well worth exploring and rewards repeated listenings. Pavel and Samson explain more about the journey they've been on to come to this point, and some of the more unexpected aspects of the album...

You’ve been living and performing together for many years now - how did the idea for this duet album develop, and why has it taken you until 2024 to release your duet debut?

Consider how plants are growing: some are huge in a matter of weeks and other take years to bloom. It’s similar with collaborative art forms, of which the piano duo might be the most complex, the most unforgiving. Quite simply, two inevitably very different people have to share one instrument! It takes years and years to achieve intuitional understanding, to find a way to merge without losing individual artistic signatures. It is a slow chemical process that can’t be rushed - alchemical if you want.

With all the work that we are doing individually this has been a luxury, a great private pleasure for both of us to work for years without being rushed or pressured. Of course, we could have recorded much earlier but we didn’t want to before we felt we’d achieved something special.

And as it happens, when we thought we were ready, some extraordinary alignments happened. In particular, we’ve managed to commission a piece from the great Leonid Desyatnikov for the Aldeburgh Festival, the Trompe l’oeil. When we first played through the new piece we could hardly wrap our heads around the fact that somehow we became the initiators of this very important work. From then, the idea of the recording was born.

In some eras the piano duet had this reputation of being slightly improper, due to the implication of people sitting close together on the same seat and reaching across each other and so on. Is that still true in Schubert’s time or is it more of an earlier thing?

Playing four hands will probably never be fully “proper”. Regardless of prevailing morals of one or another epoch, being so close to another person - physically, intellectually, spiritually - is very powerful. At the same time, making music together requires great emotional openness and a great deal of trust. The whole experience feels embarrassing, risky. One may call it sensual, and on the basic level it is. But in fact it is much more complex than that. There is a way to channel the tension into some kind of sublimation that is necessary for the music to happen. And this alone, this suddenly-found deep understanding of each other through music is a good enough reason to play together.

What is Schubert’s duet writing like to play - what sort of use does he make of the palette that the genre offers?

It is difficult to generalise. Schubert’s duet output is significant but not enormous and it is hard to compare one piece to another. For instance, the writing between the Fantaisie and Divertissement is incomparable. The former is extremely well balanced in the way the material is passed between the players and the sonority of the piano is really wonderfully judged - natural, rounded. But the Divertissement is a completely different thing. The writing is very fragile and unpredictable - one needs to be very careful about transparency, and also flexibility of the rhythm. Both the difficulties and effect of this score is different to a point it is somewhat hard to believe it is written by the same hand!

Leonid Desyatnikov’s Trompe-l’oeil was commissioned for Aldeburgh Music Festival - how does it fit in with the two Schubert pieces?

At first sight, Trompe-l’oeil appears to be a kind of a Doppelgänger of the Fantaisie. Of course, it was conceived as such - it repeats its shape and uses the same building material but operates in a completely different emotional context which in fact is much closer to that of the Divertissement. It becomes therefore a kind of a magic double mirror that blends together the reflections of both pieces.

This is one of the reasons why on this recording Trompe-l’oeil is placed between the two Schubert pieces. 

Trompe-l’oeil incorporates the idea of a musical illusion - how do you bring something like that to life? If the composer’s intention is to place a hidden secret in the music, how do you strike the balance between hiding it too much, vs giving it away too easily?

It is an interesting question, but the answer in fact is very simple. The thing is that Desyatnikov’s writing, the precision of his compositional technique, the architectural judgement, are absolutely impeccable. This score, as complex as it is, is a miracle of the most refined efficiency. It is so well constructed that the problem of transparency of its ideas simply doesn’t arise. In that sense, perhaps, he is closer to Stravinsky than Schubert - with all the intricacy, his writing is so logical and well calculated that it must be difficult for a performer to misjudge it.

The amazing quality of Trompe-l’oeil is that it transpires at its own will. That is also part of its mystery that is only visible to the performers.

There are some unusual extended techniques in use here, such as placing pieces of cardboard or a silk scarf on the strings for some parts of the Schubert Divertissement. Where did this idea come from? Do you think there are other pieces in the older piano canon that would benefit from these much more recent techniques?

The strange thing about playing piano is that while the “standard” repertory of the past few hundred years is commonly considered “piano repertoire”, it was conceived for a vast, somewhat overwhelming variety of keyboard instruments that are mostly not at all similar to a modern piano. This realisation may drive one to despair…or to open the way to experimentation. The recording studio is a perfect place for that - if something doesn’t work you can try something else until you find the right solution.

For the Divertissement we wanted to find a slightly eerie, ghostly sonority, and once we’d achieved that with particular adjustments of the piano action and microphone placement, we felt we needed a few “effects” to accentuate those qualities - but also to aid the structure of the piece. We played with quite a few ideas and selected what worked subtly, but effectively.

We might be the first pianists to play Schubert on prepared piano…but the idea is actually very old. It comes from “Janissary pedals” - a feature of some 18th/19th century instruments that would add interesting percussive effects. In our recording we achieved something similar by placing pieces of cardboard on the strings.

As far as the silk scarf is concerned, this effect is also inspired by the una corda effect of the old instruments, which was much more effective than it is on modern pianos.

Again, we cannot generalise. The wonderful thing about creation is that there is no right or wrong. You aim to create something that is stimulating, memorable, enchanting, enlightening…You are free to use whatever methods come to mind. But the variety of possibilities studio provides is very different to that of live stage. It was Glenn Gould who first notably challenged the subservient status of recording, making it into a fully independent art form. It is interesting that we are still not close to understanding the consequences of his achievements, and often try to make recording an extension of live performance. Both of us strongly feel that the two things are vastly different. We go on stage to find, together with the listeners, the music of a moment and a place; we go into a studio to be alone, to experiment as we like, and to find a precise expression of something so personal that it could be entrusted only to an abstract ear of a microphone.