Dukas, Falla, Liszt & Mussorgsky: Sorcellerie - CD

Enchanting tales and timeless legends are the common threads running through this album conceived by Duo Jatekok: Naïri Badal and Adelaïde Panaget are transformed into sorceresses on four hands and two pianos - enchanting guides who lead us through a programme featuring a Faustian pact, magic, and the world of childhood. At it's heart is Liszt's Piano Sonata, brilliantly transcribed for two keyboards by Saint-Saens: 'It illustrates the eternal struggle between the hubris of excess and the tragic fall, between light and darkness', say the duo of this 'Faustian' masterpiece by Liszt, a great admirer of Goethe. In a more carefree but equally fantastical vein is the famous Sorcerer's Apprentice, which Paul Dukas himself transcribed in 1898. The trance-like atmosphere and frenzied dancing continues with Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo (Love the magician). Finally, Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, a 'danse macabre between the world of the living and that of the spirits', rounds off this supernatural odyssey.