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It’s hard to resist this joyously clangorous album and the enthusiastic performances of this husband-wife duo. The possibilities of two pianos are perhaps best captured in the album’s centerpiece, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which builds from a rumbling representation of a cotton gin to a propulsive and incisive climax. The percussive qualities of two pianos are on full display throughout the album, from the gentle murmur of Balinese gamelan to the insistent rhythms of minimalism.

Jan WellerHost

This album of works for two pianos features pianists who are life partners as well as a performing duo, and each also has a thriving solo career. Anna Geniushene won the silver medal at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, while Lukas Geniušas’s two Rachmaninoff recordings have both won major awards.

The program for their first duo album pays tribute to American music and the country itself as melting-pots, with works by Gershwin, Stravinsky, Copland (arranged by Bernstein) and Colin McPhee that fuse classical music, jazz, Mexican music and Balinese rhythms. Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues from Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballads is also included, and the title track closing the album is John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction, a literal and figurative crossroads where all these streams of influence can meet.

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