MUSIC : Mozart Pianists: Those Who Can, Duo : Husband, Wife Will Have a 50-50 Relationship in Pacific Symphony Concert

Early in 1779, a dejected Mozart headed back to his despised native city of Salzburg, having failed to secure a position during a recent trip to Paris. Complete freedom--awarded with the notorious kick on his backside dismissing him from the hated service of Salzburg’s Archbishop Colloredo--was a long 1 1/2 years away.

Even so, soon after his return, Mozart composed a number of imperishable works, including a two-piano concerto, K. 365, written for himself and his sister as soloists.

“There is this joie de vivre, optimism and exuberance in the piece, with just a few shadows here and there,” said pianist Remy Loumbrozo, who, with his wife, Arianna Goldina, will play the piece tonight and Thursday with the Pacific Symphony.

“Perhaps he was feeling some nostalgia for his trip to Paris,” Loumbrozo said in a telephone interview from their home in New York. “He was just returning to Salzburg and was not too happy about that. But it does not show in the concerto.”

Loumbrozo called the work a favorite among duo pianists such as themselves because “the two parts are absolutely equal.”

“There is a constant dialogue between the two instruments,” he said. “It really is a conversation, not only between the two instruments, but also with the orchestra. The piano writing is sensational.”

Sensational, but not exactly easy, cautioned Goldina.

“Mozart is never easy,” she said, as the two passed the phone back and forth. “Well, it’s only easy for children. Once you grow up, it becomes very difficult for everybody.”

Why?

“Because of the purity of expression,” she said. “He is so sincere and speaks from the heart. You cannot hide. He writes in the simplest possible terms, but every note has a meaning. There is not a single empty part of his music.”

Loumbrozo, a native of Paris, and Goldina, who was born in Riga, Latvia, met and married 10 years ago while students at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

“We were pursuing independent careers,” Loumbrozo said, but then “decided to train together and study the wonderful repertory at hand--actually four hands.”

They started entering competitions about eight years ago, winning awards in the United States and Europe. “That changed our whole lives,” he said. “We are only playing together now, both duets and piano-duo formats.”

Loumbrozo estimates that although they have about 85 works for two pianos in their repertory, “I will tell you, there is still so much to be done.”

“The more we go into the repertory,” he said, “the more we find things that are really worth hearing, and not just for the sake of unearthing forgotten works.”

Nor is it a dead form, he insisted. “Many composers are currently writing for the medium,” he said. “We receive many manuscripts for the two-piano medium,” as well as works for one piano with two players.

Both say that duo pianism is “coming back, at least in this country,” noting that the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in music went to Mel Powell’s “Duplicates: A Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra.” Additionally, they cited an upsurge in applications to the International Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition, created in 1987.

“There were 40 applications in 1987,” Loumbrozo said. “For the second edition in 1989, which we won, there were 96 duos. Now for the 1991 competition, we just heard there have been 179 applications coming from as far as Australia, the U.S.S.R., Argentina, Japan, from all over the world.

“In all fairness, one has to give credit to the Labeque sisters (Katia and Marielle) for bringing the medium to a much wider audience in the past 15 years,” Loumbrozo said.

What’s important in a two-piano medium is, Goldina says, is to avoid sounding mechanical. “People think that if you play two pianos, you have to keep time, but it’s not really so. You hear the same freedom of expression as with solo piano. That’s what were striving for: to speak united but at the same time with two distinct voices. That’s what’s so special.”

* Arianna Goldina and Remy Loumbrozo will be soloists in Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos, K.365, with the Pacific Symphony led by Carl St. Clair today and Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Also on the program: Ives’ “Central Park in the Dark” and Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” Tickets: $10 to $33. Information: (714) 474-2109.