The joys of four-hand piano

One of the few social activities not yet prohibited under lockdown laws is four-handed piano playing.

I don’t mean sitting side-by-side at one keyboard. That would risk infection and, if snitched on, the possibility of sharing a prison cell with Piers Corbyn. No, the four hands must be divided equally across two pianos, and the instruments must be end-to-end. Safely isolated in this manner — perhaps three or four metres apart — the ivories can be tickled for as long as you want.

I’ve been a devoted four-hand piano player all my life — due entirely to the limitations of the two I was born with. On one keyboard I insist on playing secondo, which usually involves laying down an approximate wash of sound while the primo player dazzles with melodic showmanship. Secondo is a place of relative anonymity, which suits me fine.

There’s a sizeable repertoire of music written for this combination, from Mozart to Kurtag. Schubert alone wrote four or five masterpieces for two players at one keyboard. Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninov, Dvorak and Brahms all pitched in with some wonderful additions to the canon. There should be enough to keep anyone happy for a lifetime.

And yet.

There is another, almost limitless ocean of music for more than one player, and more than one piano. From about 1780 to 1910 it was commonplace for all genres of music to be arranged or transcribed for an almost limitless combination of players. Within a very short time of its publication in 1888, for instance, Tchaikovsky’s passionate and magisterial Fifth Symphony had been arranged twice for one piano and one pianist; for one piano and two pianists; for two pianos and four hands; and two pianos and eight hands.