Four members of the Toradze Piano Studio gave passionate performances of all of Serge Rachmaninoff's works for two pianos Sunday night.

Known for performances of music by a single composer, the studio members are in Pittsburgh for a series of concerts as part of the "Rediscovering Rachmaninoff" festival. Organizer Joseph Horowitz described Sunday's concert at the University of Pittsburgh's Bellefield Hall Auditorium as "encapsulating the stylistic odyssey" of Rachmaninoff's compositional career; a career that the Toradze Piano Studio captured with sincere and nuanced readings.

As a trio playing a single piano, Vakhtang Kodanashvili, Edisher Savitski and Svetlana Smolina displayed wonderful, six-hand ensemble technique throughout Rachmaninoff's early compositions, "Waltz" and "Romance." In "Waltz," Savitski captured the harmonically introspective quality of the opening gesture, to which Kodanashvili and Smolina could gradually grow into the work's poignantly wistful theme.

As a duo performing on separate pianos, Kodanashvili and Savitski gave stellar performances of Rachmaninoff's "Russian Rhapsody" and the composer's "Symphonic Dances." The pair brought out the character-piece quality of "Rhapsody," and maintained a clear balance between the swirling accompaniments to the main themes. Rachmaninoff's version of "Dances" for two pianos, while lacking the instrumental color of the familiar version for orchestra, brought the composition's underlying harmonic content to the forefront.

Kodanashvili and Savitski displayed excellent ensemble unity throughout the work, especially at the recapitulation of the first movement's main theme. Savitski found the perfect touch of his accompaniment to balance Kodanshvili's expressive playing style in the middle Andante con moto. Each maintained excellent control of the instruments' wide dynamic range and brought out the invigorating contrasts of the final movement.

Maxim Mogilevsky joined Smolina for Rachmaninoff's Suite No. 1, "Fantasie-tableaux," and Suite No. 2. Although the performance of the second suite suffered from some performer fatigue, the pair gave a fantastic presentation of the first. The evocative quality of their performance vividly captured the musical vignettes in Rachmaninoff's composition. This duo's highlight was the boisterousness of the bells in the final movement, "Russian Easter."

The Toradze Piano Studio performs chamber music by Rachmaninoff with members of the PSO and Duquesne University at 8 tonight in PNC Recital Hall, Duquesne University, and gives an all-piano Rachmaninoff recital at 8 p.m. April 15 in Kresge Hall, Carnegie Mellon University. Tickets: $5-$10; call 412-392-4900.