Founded in Berlin in 2009, the Piano Duo Takahashi-Lehmann here play works in four-hand piano versions by the composers themselves. Schumann’s Symphony No 2 in C major sounds so convincingly pianistic it’s hard to remember the orchestration at all. He takes a few liberties to ensure no muddied textures, but it comes as no surprise to recall that he drafted his scores at the piano. Schoenberg tried several versions of his First Chamber Symphony, from piano two-hands in 1906 to, much later (1923 and 1935), large ensemble. The single-movement work on piano sounds limpid and crisply layered. The revelation is Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, intended as the final movement of his quartet Op 130. Percussive, dissonant, revolutionary and deftly played by this duo, it could have been written last week.
