They seem to be in a trance behind the piano: eyes closed, their heads swaying to the music, slightly turned away from each other. As if they are lost in their own dream world – or better: in the mythical dream world of Ankakusu, the phoenix-like bird from Persian legends that inspired Fazıl Say to write a four-hand piano concerto. The Turkish composer wrote it especially for the Jussens and on Friday evening it was performed for the first time on Dutch soil in Enschede. The music bubbles with oriental influences and jazzy rhythms and with creative playing techniques such as dampening the piano strings by hand.
An opening motif that emerges from the heaviness swells into an explosion of percussive piano playing. The chemistry between the Jussens and Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the string orchestra that plays without a conductor but has been expanded for the occasion with four wind players and two percussionists, is clearly good: syncopations such as those heard here are not easy without a conductor, but the orchestra plays them flawlessly , and with pleasure.
Lucas and Arthur Jussen can now dream of Say’s idiom. They have previously played the German and American premieres of this piano concerto, and on their debut in the Master Pianists series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw they performed a commissioned work by Say in 2018: the four-handed Night which contains the same pounding rhythm as in Ankakusu can be heard.
Hand in the piano
Gradually the trance gives way to concentration as the brothers rise from their stools in synchronization and each place an arm in the grand piano to dampen the strings, while they pass jazzy runs to each other with the other hand. The dull sound mysteriously merges with the sound of the string players, who tap the strings with the wood of their bow. And then suddenly the music climbs upward, as if the phoenix were rising above the clouds – before Say crashes it shortly afterwards with a drumbeat.
Schubert’s sounds after the break Lifestyle, also a piano work for four hands, which evolves from a controlled threat to code red for the Jussens, and the ‘Adagio’ from Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. The arrangement for string orchestra by the young Dutch composer Primo Ish-Hurwitz (22) begins with a single, icy viola that slowly thaws and receives acclaim from the rest. Amsterdam Sinfonietta plays so warmly that you hardly miss the brass, even in that screaming dissonant 9-tone chord, above which concertmaster Candida Thompson blares the trumpet solo from her violin.