Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle are both life partners and piano partners who bring remarkable ensemble synchronicity, tonal warmth and sheer joy to everything they play. As much as I’ve enjoyed their earlier Melodiya recordings from a musical standpoint, their first release on Alpha benefits from superior recorded sound and a clearly well-regulated concert grand.

The pianists manage to fuse finesse and heartiness in ways that make their performances sound fresh. Soaring inner voices glide over fluid arpeggios in the opening piece of Bizet’s Jeux d’enfants, ‘L’escarpolette’, while in ‘La toupie’ the crisp treble chords playfully interact with the wittily inflected left-hand writing. Their delicious timing of the upward runs and dramatic rests in ‘Le volant’ would provide the ideal accompaniment to a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton silent film. The trills and dotted rhythms in ‘Trompette et tambour’ come closer to miming those exact instruments than in any other recording I’ve heard. And the duo’s elegant phrasing in the concluding ‘Le bal’ somehow justifies their breakneck yet effortlessly controlled tempo.

Their Debussy Petite suite counts among this work’s most supple and poetic recorded interpretations. The cantabiles of ‘En bateau’ float over the bar lines, while the remaining movements breathe with balletic lightness of being. Fauré’s Dolly suite also receives as vividly characterised an interpretation as one could wish, replete with an appreciable kick to the concluding hard-hitting accents in ‘Le pas espagnol’. Eloquence, simplicity and subtle tonal shadings make Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye appear to play itself.

Louis Aubert’s less familiar Feuille d’images is expressively austere and melodically elusive; I suspect that Aubert had Debussy’s ‘La serenade interrompue’ in mind while composing the third-movement ‘Sérénade’. In any event, I much prefer the refined and imaginatively nuanced readings of Berlinskaya and Ancelle to the bleaker, more literal-minded duo pianism of Jean-Pierre Armengaud and Olivier Chauzu on Grand Piano. Four-hand fanciers will certainly want this enchanting and highly recommendable release.

‘Passage secret’

Aubert Feuille d’images Bizet Jeux d’enfants, Op 22 Debussy Petite suite Fauré Dolly, Op 56 Ravel Ma Mère l’Oye

Ludmila Berlinskaya, Arthur Ancelle pf duet

Alpha ALPHA1024

This review originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today