A piano duo concert usually promises to be a pretty exciting experience; two pianists playing in perfect tandem in split-second timing offers a little more than the usual share of pianistic thrills.

One would have thought that the duo piano recital by Yuri Didenko and Arkadi Zenziper would have been a case in point, however, in retrospect, although interesting, the concert had very few really thrilling moments.

Perhaps it was because of the works the duo chose to perform. The Brahms Sonata for Two Pianos in F Minor op 34b, which is a transcription of the op 34 Piano Quintet, was oddly unsatisfactory as a work as I feel its string writing, although transcribed for two pianos by Brahms himself, simply does not have the same effect.

I found the syncopated rhythm of the second movement Andante, un poco adagio, oddly disconcerting, and found myself longing for the original piano and strings version. Overall, the effect of the entire opus, which for a piano work is pretty long, was uncomfortably clangourous.

I am not sure how often or how long Didenko and Zenziper have been performing together like this but there were times when the rapport was not as tight as it should have been.

Although the opening declamatory bars of the Brahms sonata were executed with panache and style, the dense contrapuntal material of this thorny work rendered the stylish opening a mere distant memory. Not that the pianists are not both formidable but the sonata itself did not work for them.

So many piano duos like this have been consigned to the dustbins of history for the simple reason that they were written to familiarise a work to a wider audience in the days when recording was still a twinkle in someone’s eye.

There are piano duos of practically everything. I would actually love to listen to a Beethoven Symphony performed this way, however, most of the time these arrangements are today mere intellectual curiosities.

There is, however, the great and wonderful transcription; practically transformation of Brahms’ G Minor Piano Quartet op 25 for orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg in 1938.

This work is amazing, and was commissioned by Otto Klemperer creating what is sometimes referred to as Brahms’ Fifth Symphony. This is why there are, in fact, transcriptions and transcriptions. Some work and some don’t.

This particular Sonata for Two Pianos was not well received even by Brahms’s own contemporaries and friends. Then why perform it?

The Symphonic Dances op 45 is Rachmaninov’s last work. There is a sense of impending doom in the very name of the first movement, Non Allegro, in which the composer reworks the theme of his First Symphony, which is why it sounded all so familiar and yet unfamiliar as I had not listened to the dances before not even in their original orchestral version.

There is also plenty of Russian Orthodox chanting woven into it that perhaps makes it the composer’s farewell to the world and possibly his requiem. It is not a happy work at all, which is why, coming after the Brahms sonata, the mood of the audience simply couldn’t lift. The performance by Didenko and Zenziper here was in my opinion, superior to that evidenced during the Brahms.

Both pianists are dyed-in-the-wool Rachmaninovians, and the particular timbre of this phenomenal composer who gave us Piano Concerto no 2 which will, sure as eggs are eggs, thrill and seduce audiences for as long as music exists as we know it, is unmistakable. And when played in the pure Russian manner by musicians who were probably exposed to the C Minor Prelude when still in their mother’s womb, the effect is riveting.

The Andante con moto; Tempo di Valse was unforgettable. Despite the deeply embedded fatalism of the whole work, there still lingers that inimitable Rachmaninovian lyricism that fascinates the listener with its poetic flights.

As Alexei Galea who organised a week of master classes by Didenko, who is based at the Moscow State Conservatoire, wrote in the programme: “Let us not forget those who are here simply to listen to great music. After all, the sacred act of listening is really the highest goal of all, which, even on its own, justifies the existence of theatres, pianos. Orchestras... and yes; perhaps even the existence of musicians.”

Coming from a musician and intellectual of Galea’s intensity and calibre this is a deep and sadly very often overlooked observation which, as a professional member of the audience and not a musician, I reiterate that musicians and their audience cannot perform independently of each other, and should, like love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage.