Four Hands

Piano duets were more than merely a musical genre in the nineteenth century: they were an act of sociability, as well as a means of propaganda and teaching. They were also a profitable business for publishers. The practice gave rise to the most diverse forms of expression: arrangements of operas or symphonic pieces, children’s pieces, dance music, ambitious sonatas. From the scholarly scores of Boëly, Onslow and Gouvy to the suites of Fauré and Debussy, a whole century was devoted to this repertoire, in which orchestral transcriptions sometimes took on the appearance of virtuoso tours de force when it came to Saint-Saëns’s symphonic poems or Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole.