CRITIC’S CHOICE

Christopher Cook My piano playing days are long gone, much to the relief of the old school friend whom I once partnered. As I listen to Steven Osborne and Paul Lewis’s French Duets for Hyperion, I hear the errors of my playing ways. You couldn’t slip cigarette paper between their four hands in a cheeky account of Poulenc’s early Sonata. This is music for bad boys. But they are on best nursery behaviour in Fauré’s Dolly Suite while Ravel’s Mother Goose makes my fingers itch for the keyboard again.