Mozart, Schubert & Others: Piano Duets

Album review

Despite their young age, Zala Kravos and her younger brother Val are already exceptional pianists. With their talent and with their musical maturity, they regularly impress audiences and the specialist press, which will certainly also be the case for their recording debut. In 2019, they received a chamber music diploma for piano four hands with great distinction at the Conservatory of the City of Luxembourg.

"We have performed works for piano four-hands and for two pianos since our childhood. At first, it took the form of occasional encores at the end of recitals. Encouraged by the reaction of our audiences, we have begun to perform them more and more often since then. After many, sometimes cacophonous fraternal battles and subsequent reconciliations, we decided to create an enduring record of our joys and sorrows. We invite you to discover our journey through music through this recording, into which we have poured our heart and soul.

Although the Mozart's Sonata for Piano Four-Hands recorded here is not our favourite among those written by Mozart, it occupies a special place in our repertoire as it is the very first that we worked on and performed in public for several years. Mozart wrote this Sonata when he was 17 years old, which was also our average age when we recorded it. We hope that listeners will detect a certain exuberance in our playing.

Since childhood, music has allowed us to immerse ourselves in situations that we have never experienced. Through the alchemy of notes and sounds, we are able to perceive universes that would otherwise remain foreign and incomprehensible. After listening to our recording on a bright summer's day, we realised how much we had felt the emotions aroused by this Fantasia, which is in fact neither fantastical, whimsical nor picturesque. Schubert, who was suffering from an incurable illness, invites us on a veritable emotional rollercoaster. The principal melodic material, which opens the piece and appears regularly after tumultuous passages, could be serene and comforting in another context; here, it is imbued with a melancholic resignation bordering on despair. The following movements are spirited and full of optimism, but the awareness of tragic destiny takes over again and again.

We would like to believe Walt Disney when he claimed that "adults are just grown up kids", but our experience leads us to believe otherwise. It is so difficult to preserve one's inner child, to safeguard the sparkling imagination, spontaneity and overflowing enthusiasm, and to ensure one's open-mindedness, curiosity and amazement remains intact. We hope that these Bizet's Jeux d'enfants were worth the effort, that the stakes were not too high, that we retained some of childlike traits in us and that they are reflected in our interpretation of these miniatures that sparkle with joy but are also dreamy and meditative". (Zala and Val Kravos)
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