Two Pianos/Four Hands
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:56 |
| 2. | Arensky: Silhouettes, Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 23 | 00:18:16 |
| 3. | Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 19 | 00:31:11 |
| 4. | Lutosławski: Variations on a Theme by Paganini for Two Pianos | 00:08:04 |
Twenty fingers is a lot to work with, whether on one piano or two. This program celebrates the musical depths that can be achieved, and the fun that can be had, when two pianists collaborate. First, we hear a stirring Suite for Two Pianos by the Russian Romantic Anton Arensky, whose touching melodies and playful counterpoint show off all that a couple of keyboards can achieve. Béla Bartók’s breathtaking ballet The Miraculous Mandarin is full of frantic chase scenes, sultry, seductive dance numbers, and tense, evocative harmonies that imitate the hustle and bustle of an early 20th-century metropolis. Bartók’s unique musical palette, and his incessant rhythmic energy, are brought to the fore in this arrangement of the ballet for piano, four hands. To cap it all off, we hear music of the Polish master composer Witold Lutosławski, whose wild, daring, yet strangely accessible compositions made him a distinct voice in modern music. In his Variations on a Theme by Paganini for Two Pianos, we encounter the stirring new sounds that he draws from a familiar tune by the Romantic violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini.
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Alessio Bax
Wu Qian
Juho Pohjonen
Orion Weiss
Alessio Bax won first prize at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and has appeared with nearly 200 orchestras, including the New York, London, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras; the Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Sydney, BBC Scottish, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras; the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras; and the Tokyo and NHK Symphonies in Japan. He is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. At age 14, Bax graduated with top honors from the conservatory of Bari, Italy. He is a former member of CMS’s Bowers Program and is on the faculty at New England Conservatory. For ten years, Bax has been Artistic Director of the Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, and is the Artistic Director of the London Festival of Chamber Music at Smith Square Hall in London. He also serves as Co-Artistic Director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation for emerging pianists.
Winner of a 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, as well as classical music’s bright young star award for 2007 by The Independent, pianist Wu Qian has maintained a busy international career for over a decade. She has appeared as soloist in many international venues including the Wigmore, Royal Festival, and Bridgewater halls in the UK, City Hall in Hong Kong, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. As a soloist she has appeared with the Konzerthaus Orchester in Berlin, the Brussels Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, I Virtuosi Italiani, the European Union Chamber Orchestra, and the Munich Symphoniker. She won first prize in the Trio di Trieste Duo Competition and the Kommerzbank Piano Trio competition in Frankfurt, and has received numerous other awards. Appearances this season include performances in the UK, Germany, USA, Korea, Australia, Spain, and The Netherlands and collaborations with Alexander Sitkovetsky, Leticia Moreno, Cho-Liang Lin, Clive Greensmith, and Wu Han. Her debut recording of Schumann, Liszt, and Alexander Prior was met with universal critical acclaim. She is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Piano Trio with which, in addition to performing in major concert halls and series around the world, she has released two recordings on the BIS label and also a disc of Brahms and Schubert on the Wigmore Live Label. Wu Qian an alum of The Bowers Program.
Pianist Juho Pohjonen is in demand internationally as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber performer. An ardent exponent of Scandinavian music, he has a growing discography offering music by Finnish compatriots such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, and Jean Sibelius. Recent engagements include the Taiwan, BBC, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras; the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras; and the symphonies of San Francisco, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Colorado. Pohjonen is an alum of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and enjoys an ongoing relationship with the organization. Pohjonen earned a master’s degree from Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu-Tawaststjerna at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He was selected by Sir András Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship. In 2019, Pohjonen launched MyPianist, an AI-based app that provides interactive piano accompaniment.
Orion Weiss has performed with the major orchestras of North America including the Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic and at major venues and festivals worldwide. Known for his affinity for chamber music, he performs regularly with violinists James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, and William Hagen, pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Roman Rabinovich, and the Ariel, Parker, Ehnes, Calidore, and Pacifica Quartets. Weiss can be heard on the Naxos, Telos, Bridge, First Hand, Yarlung, and Artek labels. He has been awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, Gilmore Young Artist Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. A native of Ohio and an alum of CMS’s Bower Program, Weiss attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.