In his fourth suite for two pianos, Arensky abandons the salon style he'd favored in the first three and takes a fuller, late-Romantic concert approach similar to that of Rachmaninov's suites for two pianos. Perhaps it's significant in this respect that Arensky dedicated this work to Vera Siloti, the wife of pianist Alexander Siloti, who was Rachmaninov's cousin.

As in the Rachmaninov suites, Arensky's falls into four movements. The sonorous Prelude, officially in D flat, is highly chromatic and full of harmonic surprises, although the melody's phrasing is foursquare, and Arensky merely repeats the theme with varying accompanying figures and in different registers rather than providing fresh material for contrast.

The A flat Romance begins as a straightforward, cantabile piece, but despite its swaying rhythm and the carefree nature of its theme (again, in the singular), there's something disquieting about some of the movement's harmonic turns and the desperate busyness of some of its ornamental figures. Even so, performers may, if they wish, emphasize the music's happy music box character without misrepresenting the movement.

"The Dream," the most extended single movement in Arensky's suites, begins with light, arpeggiated figures, all accompaniment and no tune. Eventually a chordal sequence that initially served as an underlying harmonic structure for the arpeggios emerges in the treble as the true main melody. At length, a second section arises, dark and rhapsodic and not at all dreamlike; this is followed by a repeat of the first section.

The concluding movement, simply called Finale, revives the theme of the Romance, but now turns it into a dizzying waltz in the manner of Chopin, full of potentially disturbing undercurrents and not at all similar to the glittering, superficial but entertaining waltz at the center of Arensky's first suite.

© James Reel, All Music Guide