This remarkable recital first came about when Andras Schiff and Peter Serkin, referred to in Klaus Schwizer’s accompanying essay as musical ‘protagonists’ rather than ‘kindred souls’, appeared in 1997 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum and, providing an identical programme, gave everyone food for thought. Hungarian and American respectively, their novel and stimulating offering transcends all national boundaries as they challenge convention by sandwiching ‘daunting’ Reger and Busoni between two sharply contrasted works by Mozart. Who would have thought that Mozart’s dour C minor Fugue, K426 could sound less than incongruous beside Reger, or that it could be written by the same composer as the radiant D major Sonata? The fugue is, indeed, startlingly modernist, imbuing a traditional form with a new spirit and, remarkably, setting the stage for Reger, who sends the 11th Bagatelle from Beethoven’s Op. 119 on a journey far from its innocente e cantabile beginnings. Whether ethereal, opaque or ending in gloriously prolonged triple forte thunder, every demand is met with unfaltering lucidity, and the same can be said of the performance of Busoni’s epic mix of intellectual grandeur and rigour.
After such heavyweights, Mozart’s Sonata comes as a much-needed ray of sunshine. Schiff and Serkin are both (in their very different ways) celebrated Mozartians, and so it is hardly surprising to find them uniting their gifts in playing of exemplary grace (the central Andante falls like balm on the ear) and vivacity. In such hands, ‘seeming superficiality’ does, indeed, become ‘enthralling’. ECM’s recording and presentation are excellent.'