CMS concert, Nov 7 2026

Barbara and I heard the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Nov 7, 2026. It was an all-piano concert, each piece with two pianists (except for the encore, more about that later). There were five pieces on the program and five pianists. They planned it so each pianist played two pieces but always with a different partner.

The first piece was the only four-hand piece, the only piece where the pianists sat together at one piano, rather than each having their own piano. It was the Mozart sonata in C major, written in 1787, played by Alessio Bax and Wu Han with wit and elegance. My favorite moment happens at around 0:58 in the performance below. The upper player introduces the second theme and the lower player ripples up with a cheeky response. It made me chuckle.

Next up was a Chopin Rondo in C major, written in 1828, played by Evren Ozel and Anne-Marie McDermott. It was a charming piece, full of sparkle.

The first half ended with *Variations on a theme by Paganini* by Witold Lutosławski, written in 1941 and played by Bax and Jean-Effaim Bavouzet. I didn't know that Bavouzet was playing on this program and couldn't have been more thrilled. I heard him play the complete works for solo piano by Ravel in a CMS concert a few months before, seriously one of the most impressive and thrilling concerts I've heard in my life. I was familiar with the Paganini from the solo violin original and at least one other arrangement but enjoyed this version more than the others. The slightly insane opening seemed like Lutosławski saying,"I'm doing this on MY terms." He used unexpected jazzy harmonies and got an incredibly wide range of sounds out of those two pianos. It was the kind of music that made me wonder a) how he conceptualized it and b) how he figured out how to write it down. Bax and Bavouzet played the hell out of it. It was a major display of talent and technique but they also gave the impression that they were having fun. The highlight of the program.

The second half opened with Alexandre Tansman's *Le train de nuit* from 1951, played by Ozel and Han. I'd never heard of Tansman - - he was Polish and spent much of his career in Paris, rubbing elbows with Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartók, and Gershwin. The CMS performance we heard was the US premiere of the piece, can you believe that. I was a little concerned that it started off with the most moldy clichés of Train Music. "I think I can, I think I can," etc, who needs to hear that. But it pretty quickly (pardon me) derailed from that idea and went off in unexpected directions, with brilliant shocking flashes of faux Messaien, a dreamy faux Ravel waltz, a playful little fugue, and would you believe a tango. The piece was amusing and cute rather than genius. I enjoyed it but to be honest I might have preferred to have heard an different kind of night train, a two-piano arrangement of this:

The focal point of the program was Gershwin's two-piano version of *An American in Paris,* premiered in 1928 but started in 1926 on his first visit to Paris when he was visiting Alexandre Tansman! It was played by McDermott and Bavouzet - - they gave it their all but I felt like the two-piano version didn't really serve the piece, it felt seriously flat compared to the version for orchestra. The best example of this is the gorgeous trumpet solo that happens around 7:42 in this performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic:

The first note from the trumpet glows and spins and travels somewhere, it's thrilling. The same moment happens at 7:53 in this CMS performance:

You can't glow, spin, or travel on a held note on the piano. It just sits there.

They played an encore, an eight-hand arrangement of the overture to Mozart's *The Marriage of Figaro.* Yes, eight hands - - that's two pianists at each piano. Somehow they squeezed in a fifth set of hands (Bavouzet's, to be precise) at the low end of one of those pianos so it became ten hands. Three people sitting at one keyboard is a lot of limbs so Bavouzet created a little extra space by putting his free arm around Han, which got a laugh from the audience. The performance had delightful sloppy quality to it, perfect for the piece and for an encore.