Piano Duo Kiyotaka Izumi and Polina Cernova Come to Bangkok

Piano duo Izumi (left) & Chernova (middle) with local pianist Jack Russell Hester (right) who presented flowers to the performers following their Bangkok recital.

Goethe Auditorium. Bangkok, Thailand. May 10, 2013. Because the pianists who come to Bangkok are seldom known beyond their local areas, one never knows what one will hear. Japanese pianist Koyotaka Izumi and Russian Polina Cernova, are now resident in Belgium, where they teach piano. It was immediately evident that they had together performed the tricky piano duo repertory for a long time. Rather than two pianists going their separate ways, as can easily happen without extensive practice as a duo over a long period of time, Izumi and Cernova sounded as one, a clear indication that they had thought out well in advance, exactly how they wanted each piece to sound The musically most demanding work on the program was Robert Schumann's Bilder aus Osten, opus 66, which Schumann wrote for piano four hands, and to me it sounded the most beautiful. The remainder of the program consisted of well-know orchestral works which Brahms and Liszt had transcribed for piano four hands, no doubt in order to sell their music. The problem with these arrangements is that anyone who is familiar with the pieces, inevitably hears the orchestra, and even as well-played as they were in the capable hands of Izumi and Cernova, four hands on the keyboard do not quite come up to the orchestral originals.