Azica Records, Inc.
Product Review...

THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

May 1993

CLASSICAL RECORDINGS

Hecht and Shapiro "Sentimiento"

Azica Classical ACD-71201

Hecht and Shapiro,

duo pianists, are like

one on 1st recording

By DONALD ROSENBERG

PLAIN DEALER MUSIC CRITIC

Hecht and Shapiro made big news last fall when they won the Munich International Duo-Piano Competition. The musicians, who are artists in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music, here are represented in their first recording, which is also the inaugural release by Azica, a Cleveland label that will focus on classical and jazz fare.

The title of the premiere disc is "Sentimiento," the name of the second movement of Manuel Infante's "Danses Andalouses." Hecht and Shapiro make their corporate presence felt immediately in the jaunty folk rhythms and romantic colors of the three movement collection, which demand utmost attention to sonoric detail, interweaving of lines and expressive nuances.

The duo-pianists, although sitting at separate, distant keyboards, maintain remarkable rapport, answering one another with heightened communicative skills and often sounding like one massive instrument capable of dazzling feats of dexterity.

The pianistic obstacles are no less fearsome in Rachmaninoff's Six Pieces, Op. 11, which is set for piano four hands. At a single keyboard, Hecht and Shapiro are close in more ways than one. They delineate the shape of phrases with remarkable unanimity of touch and accent. When Rachmaninoff demands poetic shadings, the musicians provide patient definition of lines. In the brilliant material, they maintain a transparency of texture that is difficult to achieve in this acrobatic music.

Azica has captured Hecht and Shapiro in a clear, vivid ambiance, which proves quite a trick in Liszt's "Reminiscences de Don Juan," in which the pianists, once again at two instruments, are as convincing in the grandiose episodes as in the charming moments.

The transcription of excerpts from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is outlandish in the best Lisztian tradition: full of fiendish flourishes, extravagant passage work and witty devices that expand Mozart's

world. The performance is gloriously etched, with virtuosity and taste merging into a pianistic earful. Hecht and Shapiro take chances, travel to the edge and come up victorious.

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