American Piano Music

Album review

While arranging music for different combinations of instruments is a practice that has been around for centuries, there are certain limitations of what can be successfully achieved. In this album of two-piano works performed by Irene and Yvonne Bugod, listeners are confronted with at least one of those limitations. The CD opens with a transcription of Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Diluting all of the power and tone color achieved with a full symphony orchestra and condensing down for two pianos simply doesn't work. The Bugod sisters' interpretation is woefully unexciting. Virtually every dance is extremely slow, almost as if they were just practicing the music at a slower tempo rather than actually performing it. Even movements that should be ravishingly energetic, like the "Mambo" or the "Cool Fugue," are intolerably plodding. The other two works on the album work better from a transcription point of view -- the Barber Souvenirs were originally for piano, four-hands, and Gershwin's version of the Rhapsody in Blue is in his own pen. But a good transcription doesn't make up for boring playing, and that's exactly what the Bugod sisters continue to deliver, providing very little variability in tone color, tempo, dynamics, or articulation. This album is definitely one to avoid.
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