Classical Music / ALEXEEV & DEMIDENKO Radio 3

There's something extravagant about music for two pianos; if the players seem to be sparring as much as bonding, it just adds piquancy. But piano attacks are the most difficult things to coordinate in music, simply because they're so percussive, and unlike percussion players, pianists do not spend their lives learning to fit in with others. With the exception of distinguished duo-pianists like the Labeque Sisters, most pianists tend to be loners.

So an occasion like Monday's BBC lunchtime recital (repeated 6.30pm Sunday R3), in which two Russian virtuosi joined hands, is rather special. Dmitri Alexeev and Nikolai Demidenko included Rachmaninov's Second Suite and Symphonic Dances on a particularly brilliant CD released last year: the ground was well prepared. In the opening March of the Second Suite, though, electricity seemed at slightly low voltage, for the chugging activity which carries the music can generate more excitement than the rather humdrum effect it had here.

The following Waltz had a nice sense of elan; it was light and trim. The purple sweetness of the Romance was kept uncloying by a sense of tasteful reserve, but how treacherous for two pianos it is, with exposed lines that need those irrational little delays before important notes. The players were, in any case, careful not to overload Rachmaninov's sumptuous, expertly woven textures, and the final Tarantella was both gorgeous and delicate.

Despite its title, the Suite is really symphonic in the serious way its ideas are developed, though they're not extended on the larger formal framework of the Symphonic Dances. Here, the ripe romantic warmth of the Suite is superseded by a more objective, bracing quality and, in the slower sections, an element of sour and sinister pessimism, which is assuaged in the conciliatory final moments of the third dance. It's not only the Dies Irae motif that suggests the music has a religious subtext.

In some ways, the two-piano version of the Dances is preferable to Rachmaninov's orchestration, because the more specific associations brought to the music by orchestral instruments limit its character. Still, the slow sections of the outer dances do seem to cry out for more sustaining power than pianos can manage. Their percussive articulation suits the slithering chromaticism of the central waltz, beautifully played without undue gush, and the reprise of the fast section in the final dance was deliciously crisp and exciting.