Home listening - a whole lot of piano

The Guardian 0

Alexei Lubimov and Olga Pashchenko make a strong case for Dussek. Plus, a fine solo disc from Karim Said, and Imogen Cooper reflecting on Schubert

• The virtuoso Czech pianist and composer Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) is not a regular on concert programmes these days, but his importance to the development of the piano was crucial. He was the first to sit in the now familiar position on stage, facing right with the piano sideways, so that listeners could admire his profile and the lid of the piano reflected the sound. Dussek was handsome and enormously popular – one report says: “after the few opening bars of his first solo, the public uttered one general Ah!”

So it’s good to have a new version of his extravagant Concerto for Two Pianos in B flat, recorded for the first time on period instruments (Alpha Classics). Alexei Lubimov and Olga Pashchenko make as good a case for the piece as possible. It is undeniably effective and stirring, but the lack of depth compared to Mozart’s two-piano concerto is very striking. More alluring and expressive is the Piano Quintet in F minor, first performed in London on one of Dussek’s tours in 1799. This features the double bass, while the quirky Notturno Concertant in E flat uses the horn as harmonic filling. Sharp-edged playing from the Finnish Baroque Orchestra.