Michael Wollny & Joachim Kühn – ‘Duo’

(ACT 9633-2 CD/Digital. Review by Jon Turney)  

Yup, it’s a duo but, as the players involved indicate, an unusual one. The concert grand piano is such a formidable music machine, when might you need two of them?

In this case, to see what two superb pianists can achieve in dialogue. It’s hard for a non-player to imagine what that might be like. But let us assume that if you have such complete command of 88 keys that it has become your natural form of expression then the chance to converse with another virtuoso is one to relish.

The pairing here, Michael Wollny and Joachim Kühn, have each made solo piano recordings of. note, as well as an earlier duo session in 2008. They came together again a year ago in Frankfurt to record in concert on two matched Steinways. This CD is the more or less unedited result.

They are of course both comprehensively well-equipped and immensely knowledgeable, and adept at the kind of extemporisation that relies as much on skilled listening as on sound production. There’s little fear of them getting in one another’s way: this recital is mostly an elegantly restrained collaboration. 

It’s a generally rhapsodic meeting of minds, without the solo interludes for both players featured on their earlier record. The overall mood is reflective, with only occasional passages of storming counterpoint. The stately chordal opening on Vienna Pitch introduces a feeling that recurs. There are few of the flurries of filigree that might arise from a two piano encounter. These players are too wise not to still their fingers when that’s what’s needed. Indeed, the pair sometimes seem so concerned to give each other space one might be listening to a solo recital after all. The playing is not tentative, exactly, but certainly very polite.

Still, there are also stirring free passages now and again, as on the rousing Aktiv, and a few with the wealth of ornamentation you might expect.The concluding episode, a piece in tribute to Joachim Kühn’s late brother, the clarinettist Rolf Kühn, is perhaps the most satisfying. But the entire encounter is thoroughly absorbing, as the note in the liner indicates – it was easy to edit out the applause, apparently, because the live audience were so deep into the music they took several moments to stir whenever the players paused.

Jon Turney writes about jazz, and other things, from Bristol / jonturney.wordpress.com https://bsky.app/profile/jonturney.bsky.social

LINK: Duo is the first release in the new ACT x Chateau Palmer series

from https://londonjazznews.com