The central interpretive decision of this recording — playing Schubert’s four-hand works on two separate pianos rather than at a single keyboard — is also its most controversial. Schubert wrote this music for the drawing room, for two friends at one bench, and there is a specific kind of closeness built into the texture: voices overlapping, hands crossing, the shared pedal forcing a constant negotiation of sound. Kissin and Levine, seated at two Steinways on the Carnegie Hall stage in May 2005, necessarily sacrificed all of that. What they got in return was something different: a clarity of voice-leading, a fullness of texture, and a sheer physical scale that tilts the music toward the orchestral.
In the Grand Duo, D. 812 — Schubert’s longest and most symphonically conceived four-hand work — this trade-off pays real dividends. The opening movement is conducted like a chamber symphony, with the two-piano medium allowing the expansive melodic arches to breathe without getting congested. Levine, himself a masterful orchestral musician, brings genuine architectural sense to the long-range phrasing of the Andante. And Kissin — on best behavior throughout, with none of the mannerism that occasionally mars his solo recordings — plays with focus and restraint.
The Fantasia in F minor is more complicated. This is music of profound interiority, and the two-piano setting inevitably pushes it outward. The Largo is powerful but slightly declamatory where it might have whispered. The fugal finale builds to a formidable climax. If you come to this recording after the Perahia-Lupu intimacy or the Richter-Britten rawness, the Kissin-Levine may feel overlit. Heard on its own terms, as a large-scale concert event that takes Schubert’s late-period toughness seriously, it is harder to dismiss.
The Lebensstürme is the particular triumph: played with clenched urgency, a sense of barely contained momentum, it is among the most gripping readings of this underrated work on disc. RCA’s engineering handles the two-piano texture better than expected, keeping spatial separation honest without making the stereo picture feel artificial.
My Favorite Moment
Something happens in the Grand Duo’s finale — the closing bars especially — that I’ve never heard quite like this anywhere else. The passage is often criticized for sounding hollow or thin on the keyboard, as if Schubert’s pen ran ahead of the instrument. Here, with two pianos sharing the load, those final pages suddenly have the weight of a real peroration: not hollow at all, but full and earned. It’s a reminder that some of Schubert’s most ambitious writing simply needs more piano than one instrument can provide.
Comparisons
Barenboim & Lupu — Schubert: Grand Duo & Three Marches Militaires (Warner Apex, 1971 recording)
The Barenboim-Lupu Grand Duo — recorded long before this Kissin-Levine concert — is the intimate, song-shaped alternative. Lupu’s tone makes every phrase breathe differently, and Barenboim provides just enough structural backbone without over-conducting. For those who want the Grand Duo as domestic music rather than public spectacle, this remains a touchstone.
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Bertrand Chamayou & Leif Ove Andsnes — Schubert: Four Hands (Erato, 2025)
The Chamayou-Andsnes disc reviewed above occupies the opposite end of the spectrum from Kissin-Levine: one piano, one bench, one intimate acoustic, complete concentration on the inner life of the late works. The contrast between the two recordings is genuinely illuminating — two entirely defensible readings of the same score that seem to describe entirely different pieces of music.
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