Music Benjamin Frith, Peter Hill Wigmore Hall, London

Hearing Benjamin Frith and Peter Hill play Stravinsky's own piano- duet version of The Rite of Spring on the Wigmore Hall's Bosendorfer on Tuesday evening, it was impossible to separate the music from its more familiar orchestral colours. That isn't always the case with keyboard arrangements, however well-known the original.

Well, in this case, the piano version was the original - at least, Stravinsky found the music at the piano and said that he could play the final Danse sacrale before he knew how to write it down. It's a tribute to his imaginative ear that the harmonies and the spacing of the notes alone so strongly evoke the instrumental sonorities he finally decided on. But it might not have seemed so in a less acute performance than this, which brought the whole work to life, without any feeling of mere substitution. Not just accurate, it was thrilling, with Hill, taking the top part, visibly twitching with nervous excitement.

Messiaen's cycle of seven pieces for two pianos, Visions de l'Amen, stretches even the more sonorous medium to its limits and, possibly, beyond. Or at least, some of the textures pose almost insuperable problems for the players, and suggest a sort of omniscient super-ear that can reconcile very quiet detail against thunderous competition. So, in the first piece, Hill upgraded the chords in his right hand, though they are marked softer than those taken by his left. A balance engineer might have told him he needn't have done so in this hall, though at least, on the Bosendorfer, he avoided the percussive clangour which can make the piece a listener's ordeal. Frith took the Steinway, and had the deeper, sometimes murkier sounds.

In his admirably clear programme notes, Hill pointed out that the Visions were written to exploit the different temperaments of Messiaen and his wife, Yvonne Loriod, with the first piano given the bells, birdsongs and decorations to suit Loriod's incisive, objective style, while the second has the main themes and underlying harmonies, suiting Messiaen's greater warmth. Hill and Frith seemed a lot closer in the way they put notes down than Loriod and Messiaen used to, and that's no bad thing. But Frith seemed the steadier, while Hill was occasionally inclined to hurry. Perhaps, one day, an enterprising enthusiast will try to orchestrate the work, so that its vast and slowly unfolding lines are really sustained and the polyphony of textures clarified. Which is not to say there are no wonderful keyboard sonorities here, and where they are heavily laden, these two players minimised the strain. A great evening, and ample measure, since it began with a good, vigorous performance of Stravinsky's ferocious Concerto for Two Pianos.