Quatre-Mains - Good or Bad?

The repertoire written for a single piano played by two pianists is larger than one might think. Franz Schubert alone has composed enough four-hand music to fill few concerts programs. Johannes Brahms wrote a masterful set of four-hand variations to a theme by Robert Schumann which surely needs to be counted as one of his greater works. But why is it that we don’t know this music very well?

It is true that there are some difficulties for two pianists to play on a single piano. The most common problem is the attack of the hammers on the strings. Other technical issues exist that make pianists refrain from playing four-hand music. Some of these issues are discussed by Ben Kass and Alan Weiss in an interview on the “Storms of Life” DVD.

So what’s good about playing four-hand works? Why did so many composers write for this ensemble?

Besides the orchestra, the piano is the instrument that offers the widest range of notes and is able to make them sound together. So in a sense, a piano is a condensed orchestral instrument. This is the reason for writing quatre-mains. Brahms wrote all his symphonies for piano in four hands before reworking them for orchestra. Other pianists did and still do just the same. Schubert’s quatre-mains works, very often even sound orchestral and Stravinsky, Ravel and Reger were among many other composers who transcribed their works and the works of others for four handed piano. So in short, writing for the piano in four hands primarily results from the wish of composers to use “more notes”, more than one pianist alone can play.

The “Quatre-Mains” concert series will introduce this better and lesser known repertoire for piano in four hands from classical music to contemporary and from different countries, and of course with new works especially composed by Ben Kass for these concerts. We will address the above mentioned issues, but the answer to “is four-hand music a good thing or not?” will have to come from you. We invite you to write your thoughts and discuss them on the guestbook.

Learn more about the musical programs and the works here

See the detailed concert calendar.