MUSIC : FOLLOW AND LEAD : For Two Pianists to Function as a Team, They’ve Got to Know How to Do Both

Ralph Markham says that for two pianists to function as a team, “you’ve got to have a pair of people who are able both to lead and to follow.”

Markham should know. He and pianist Kenneth Broadway have been functioning together successfully since 1975. Just back from a 20-city tour with the Philharmonia Hungarica, conducted by Yehudi Menuhin, they’ll join the Pacific Symphony at Irvine Meadows on Saturday to play Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos.

“You have to have people who have strong enough temperaments in themselves so that they can make their own statements,” Markham says, “but who also are able to let the other person make his statement as well. Neither can dominate, or it would be lopsided. And neither can be subservient, either. You have to make that blend and combine the strengths of each person.”

Markham, a Canadian, and Broadway, who was born in Cleveland, met when they were students at the Cleveland Institute of Music. These days, they “play up to about 50 concerts a season,” Broadway says. “We’re more than happy.”

They’re no strangers to this neck of the woods. In 1989, they gave a recital to benefit the Orange County AIDS Services Foundation at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. Last year, they played on an Orange County Philharmonic Society series at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. And in July they closed the California Music Teachers Assn.’s annual meeting in Long Beach with a recital and a master class.

They always use 9-foot Yamaha grands, a practice that runs counter to the current rage of playing on period instruments or on replicas of the instruments the composers had.

“We’re very much of the feeling that if (those composers) had modern instruments, they would have been delighted,” Broadway says.

“In fact,” Markham adds, “when you’re playing a 9-foot piano, you have more variety and control, more color and dynamics than in a smaller piano.

“The question of style comes more directly from how you play the piano, rather than from the instrument itself. When you play Brahms, you’re going to use your full arm weight and the weight of your entire being. Mozart, you approach in a physically distinct way.”

Besides, he noted, “here we are playing a piece from the middle period of Mozart’s life in the great outdoors. I don’t think Mozart would ever have thought that this would be done to this piece--that it would be amplified and heard by thousands of people outside.

“I think it’s absolutely wonderful that people will be sitting on a lawn or whatever they sit on and listening to this divine music. But you have to help it out.

“So everything has been altered a little for these circumstances. It’s much better to do that, rather than the way it would have originally been done--and have nobody hear it.”

Who: Pianists Ralph Markham and Kenneth Broadway, playing with the Pacific Symphony, conducted by Carl St. Clair.

When: Saturday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m.

Where: The Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Irvine Center Drive exit. Turn left at the end of the ramp if you’re coming from the south, right if you’re coming from the north.

Wherewithal: $10 to $44.

Where to call: (714) 740-2000 (TicketMaster).