Dvořák left a rich legacy of piano duets, wrenching the genre clean out of the salon. As Artur Pizarro and Rinaldo Zhok write: ‘Playing piano four hands (even more than performing on two pianos) represents the most profound and complex form of music-making together.’ That’s certainly the case in the two works on their new disc, but Pizarro and Zhok palpably relish the challenges and their Yamaha is bright and immediate-sounding.

From the Bohemian Forest is rendered with great vividness, be it the insidiously memorable melody of ‘In the Spinning-Room’ or the ‘Witches’ Sabbath’, which opens with a galumphing rhythm, before the mood darkens and the harmonies become sour and twisted. A number such as ‘On the Watch’ demands precision-engineered ensemble, which is exactly what Pizarro and Zhok give us, and their élan at the close of this piece is infectious. If ‘Silent Woods’ will never sound as rapt as it can in Dvořák’s later reworking for cello, the last movement, ‘In Troubled Times’, is impressive for the way the two pianists maintain clarity of texture, despite the extensive use of the keyboard’s lower range.

Dvořák reworked his Dumky Trio for piano duet at the request of his publisher Simrock. This is no mere transcription but a true rethinking of the original. After all, you can hardly replicate such moments as the original trio’s opening, with fraught cello set against piano, or the way the finale builds from Lento to a scrubbingly intense Vivace. The innate tension between piano and strings may have been lost, but in its place is a sense of just how starkly daring this work is – not just in its harmonic language but also the way it unfolds, demanding skilful pacing from the pianists, who need to be alive to Dvořák’s ever-changing tempi and moods. This Pizarro and Zhok do to compelling effect.

An absorbing and entertaining disc – let’s hope these two have more in store for us.