Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov arranged his most famous work, Scheherazade, and the little jolly Neapolitan Song, op. 63, for piano four hands. His wife Nadezhda Purgold, herself an accomplished pianist and composer, made the four-hand arrangement of the middle-eastern inspired symphonic suite Antar; this is its first recording. The transcription of Scheherazade is highly complex but enormously effective and rewarding. There is scope for more spontaneity and flexibility than is possible with a large orchestra, and the timbres are remarkably pungent. Two decades before Scheherazade, he’d turned to the tale of Antar at the suggestion of Balakirev and Mussorgsky. On this subject he planned to compose a symphony or symphonic poem in four movements. It would go through three versions before being published as Antar, Symphonic Suite (2nd Symphony), op. 9. The celebrated piano duo of Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow (“a dazzling husband and wife team” – Gramophone), whose nearly thirty recordings include a ground-breaking 7CD cycle of the complete original piano duets of Schubert, add to their growing discography.
