Concentrated – Giselher Schubert, December 2014

In these live recordings, Güher and Süher Pekinel are in impressive form. Their duetting is technically flawless and they achieve a unison in interpretation that seems virtually instinctual. Furthermore, there is also a stylistic command of the intricate, but welcome, exuberant virtuosity of Lutoslawki’s “Paganini-Variations,” as well as the melancholy wistful chorale of Schubert’s Fantasie in F Minor – a pinnacle of four-handed piano music certainly only rarely attained. They also play Brahms’ fifth “Hungarian Dance” in an explosive treatment, which bequeaths their Liszt-ian virtuosity and provokes an appropriate storm-like response from the audience. Their recording of Milhaud’s inexorable “Scaramouche,” which unfortunately only features the coda, demonstrates that the unmistakably personal and effective acoustic pattern of their playing arises, above all, from their idiosyncratic, yet in no way arbitrary articulation of rhythmic accompaniment figures: They perform traversing rhythms with dynamic differentiation, so that the piece loses its rigidity upon gaining distinctive momentum and impetus.

The recording of Bartok’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra also cascades with such interpretive ability similarly, a brittle handling of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, is exemplary also for its interpretive harnessing of orchestral accompaniment. The Pekinels make truly music: They give the two-musician percussion and the orchestra pit room to flourish.

All this performances can be seen on a simultaneously published DVD, which catch the playing unobtrusively. It shows two musicians who give themselves, highly concentrated, wholly unpretentiously and without any fuss to the service of their art, they handle with great perfection. That touches extremely.