As various recent versions have shown, Weber's Grand duo concertant is open to rather more interpretations than its unusual, highly original nature might suggest. Emma Johnson and Gordon Back play it in a more relaxed manner than some, seeming to see it less as a virtuoso showpiece for two exceptional performers, which it is, or as an extraordinarily original piece of musical structure, which it also is, than as romantic entertainment in the spirit of some of the other pieces in this recital. Of course, the work is all these things in any fine performance, of which this is one; the players' lively response, warm enjoyment and dashing virtuosity, with a sense of phrasing that, especially in the first movement, can be almost cheeky, do not exclude an appreciation of the strength of the Andante con moto. Sensibly, they lighten the approach considerably for the slimmer Silvana Variations.
Two other pieces are lighter, or slighter, still; Alamiro Gianpieri's fantasia on Il carnevale di Venezia, and Donato Lovreglio's fantasia on themes from La traviata. These are much the sort of thing one would expect, but they are engagingly done; and Johnson plays them brilliantly, with a sense of phrasing that gives them time and again just the right smile. Schumann's well-known Fantasiestucke are seriously and sensitively played; and those who do not know it will be pleasantly surprised by the Norbert Burgmuller Duo. Fetis writes rather sniffily about Burgmuller as an esprit bizarre whose music was as disorderly as his life; but Schumann and Mendelssohn thought differently, and mourned the loss of a composer whose romantic spirit is here at its warmest and most affecting. It has been recorded before in the 1980s, by Einar Johannesson for Merlin (nla) and is very well worth the revival, especially in so sympathetic a performance as Johnson and Back give it here.'