In classical music, piano duos have been experiencing something of a boom over the last few years. Piano-playing brothers and sisters in particular have put noticeable new life into the scene. The standard-setting brothers Anthony and Joseph Paratore from America are names worth mentioning here, as are the commercially successful sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque from the French Basque region, who also afford themselves the luxury of the old musical excursion into jazz land now and again.
In Jazz, the piano duo is a very rare occurrence indeed (one recalls the wonderful richly contrasting ensemble playing of Count Basie and his sparing, if not downright miserly, use of notes together with the baroque, effusive Oscar Peterson) and on the whole remains an exception to the rule.
The reasons for this lie in music's inner nature and are obvious. Unlike the saxophone for example, the design of which enables an extraordinary diversity of notes th be played, the sound of the piano is much less versatile. Furthermore, when one considers that one of the most important domains of this keyboard instrument is providing harmony and chords, one can easily imagine that there is together as an improvising piano duo and take the risk of making live appearances, it is a risk worth taking as they are both able to rely on their intuition and on the instinct which enables them to sense at any time what the other one will no next. Acting and reacting go and in hand and Paul Bley was quite right when he spoke of the as the only piano duo to sound like a sole pianist. The togetherness of the two parts is so close, the interlinking and entwinement so tight, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the one from the other. This is chamber music, and anyone assuming that such a label implies that a little attentiveness and dedication is expected of the listener would not be far wrong. Hans Lüdermann once explained that often plays as if he only knows what to do next once he has heard the note forming: "Before I go on stage I actually try to forget everything and just play, without thinking but just seeing where the music is leading me". Seeing where you are being led, waiting to see what surprise the next moment has in store - the duo's music beckons the listener to share in this inner intuition, enabling him to experience in an impressive way how musical patterns unfurl like growing plants.
In a certain sense of the word, this is "free music". Not because it contains a lot of the wildness of Free Jazz (rather the opposite is the case), nor because musical abandon prevails (there is absolutely no trace of this), but rather because a cosmos of utterly limitless possibilities is opened up, in which romantic reverie and the almost religious sounding hymn have just as much place as rock statements and deep blues emphasis, filigree embellishment and delicate ramifications, naive simplicity and natural modesty, manic emotion and moving moments.
Tracks
01. Gesture (Paul Bley)
02. Touching Inside (Hans Lüdermann)
03. Roll It Up! (Hans Lüdermann)
04. Warm (Paul Bley)
05. Morph (Hans Lüdermann)
06. Colour Splashes With Points (Hans Lüdermann)
07. Moving Hearts (Hans Lüdermann)
08. Metamorph (Paul Bley)
09. First Rite Of Spring (Paul Bley)
10. The Tap
11. Blau Bley Plays With Blue Hands (Paul Bley)
HANS LÜDERMANN piano
PAUL BLEY piano
Recorded at "Loft", Köln, Sunday, March 21, 1993
On the duo pieces, Paul Bley is heard on the right, Hans Lüdermann on the left channel
West Wind Records West Wind - WW 2085