Joanna Domanska, Andrzej Tatarski - Szymanowski: Phantasy, Masques & Harnasie (2013)

The main event on this disc is the first recording of the transcription of Szymanowski's ballet Harnasie for two pianos, made by Grazyna Bacewicz under Szymanowski's supervision. The opening acts are two solo piano works, one each for the two pianists to demonstrate their own way of approaching Szymanowski's music before coming together for Harnasie. Andrzej Tatarski plays the Fantasy, Op. 14, with audible strength in the passionate, forte passages, which makes them wild flights of fancy with an almost obsessive compulsion to them, but he can quite sensitively shade and control quieter moments. The Masques, Op. 34, as played by Joanna Domanska, can be just as emotionally up and down, ardent, and flamboyant, but they are slightly more translucent, which suits Domanska's more graceful touch. Both works have highly imaginative tales at heart, which the two bring out with great success. The same can be said of Harnasie, the story of a highland robber who kidnaps a bride from her wedding. Harnasie, like the piano duet versions of Stravinsky's ballets, loses the timbral variety found in the original version for voices and orchestra, and there is a complexity to it that is better defined in that version. The often dense mixture of folk dance, character, and modern music ideas is sometimes hard to follow without paying close attention in this version. But again, the sense of storytelling -- and that this is a ballet -- is very clear. Tatarski and Domanska give it an energy that helps compensate for the loss of orchestral color by replacing it with narrative color. This version will be important to fans of two-piano music as much or more than to fans of Szymanowski.