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Site Search: Use the search box to find an artiste, composer, title, or venue on this site |
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Listening position:
Relax with your choice(s) of beverage, in a place of your choosing, alone, or with members of your household or your bubble |
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We open our concert with a popular overture. We often hear the final part of this music, but here is a chance to hear the full overture to Rossini's Guillaume Tell, played by 16 hands on 4 pianos. This performance was part of a concert raising funds for Keyboard Scholarships at Austin State University. So our Multi Piano concert begins, with four pianos: |
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868) Overture to the Opera, William Tell (1829) performed by: 16 hands on four pianos, at a fundraising concert at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, with Gene Moon, conductor John Noel Roberts • Jean Roberts • James Pitts • Ping-Ting Lan Geneva Fung • James Faucett • Ron Petti • Mario Ajero |
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Gustav Theodore Holst (1874-1934) The Planets Suite arranged for eight hands on two pianos and percussion ensemble performed by MultiPiano Ensemble and Tremolo Percussion Ensemble, during Festival Israel, at the Jerusalem Theater, on 2nd June 2019 |
Given the concert title Multi Piano we cannot help but offer a succession of spectacular items. Here is something a little shorter than the overture. Four pianists on two pianos, with a percussion ensemble of four, play their arrangement of themes from Holst's The Planets. I have never had the courage to book a percussion concert. This is may be the closest we will get, percussion fans! |
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The original 3-piano version of the concerto was written in 1776 as a commission for Countess Antonio Lodron to play with her daughters, Aloysia and Giuseppa. The third part, for the younger daughter, is the least technically demanding.
Wikipedia tells us the first UK performance was at a Queen's Hall Promenade Concert, in September 1907. The pianists then were Henry Wood, York Bowen, Frederick Kiddle, with conductor Henri Verbrugghen. Our famous pianists are Schiff, Barenboim, and Solti: |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Piano Concerto No 7 Lodron for three pianos and orchestra, in F major, K242 (1776) 1 Allegro fast 2 Adagio in Bb major slow 3 Rondo. Tempo di Minuetto minuet pace performed by: András Schiff, piano • Daniel Barenboim, piano Georg Solti, piano • British Chamber Orchestra, at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in June 1989 |
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Over 80 music teachers are members of BAMTA, the Boulder Area Music Teachers' Association. Apart from their annual Multiple Piano Festival, members organise events for their students and for their own professional development.
The Multiple Piano Festival puts 12 grand pianos on the stage. Students audition in pairs at the beginning of November, and then benefit from working with the conductor in the weeks running up to the Festival. Up to 250 of the members' students take part in the Festival, in a wide range of ways. Money raised at this popular event helps BAMTA's Scholarship Fund which provides means-tested and ability-tested support for music lessons with Association members. Let's hear their performance of a theme published in piano duet form, which sounds a little like Japanese composer Koji Kondo's music for Nintendo's game franchise The Legend of Zelda. |
Catherine Rollin (b1970s) The Grand Finale performed by 24 students on 12 pianos, at the BAMTA Multiple Piano Festival, 2016 (Boulder Area Music Teachers' Association) |
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You may be seeing eight pianos on the stage in this video from the 2009 Dublin International Piano Competition. At the risk of leaving you with a sense of anti-climax, I have to say straight away that only two of these pianos will be harmed in the making of this video.
I have chosen Albert Lavignac's Galop Marche - a pretty lively work which the audience in Dublin clearly enjoy. Parisian Albert Lavignac was a distinguished music scholar. A pupil at the Paris Conservatory, later he taught there for many years. He wrote essays on theory. His La Musique et les Musiciens, a treatise on musical theory, includes a famous comparison between keys and their emotional colours (B major "energetic", E minor "sad, agitated" and the like) It was in print throughout his lifetime and for many years after. He also wrote an important early treatise on Wagner. Lavignac was a minor composer and only this Galop Marche is heard much today. It has been arranged for various combinations, including brass band. Originally written for two pianos and four hands, for one evening in Dublin it expanded delightfully into a formidable octet of competition-winning pianists and their eighty digits. Here are 16 hands, on two pianos, playing Lavignac's Galop Marche: |
Alexandre Jean Albert Lavignac (1846-1916) Galop Marche in D major IAL 2 (1905) performed by previous Dublin International Piano Competition winners: Philippe Cassard (1988) • Pavel Nersessian (1991) Davide Franceschetti (1994) • Max Levinson (1997) Alexei Nabioulin (2000) • Antii Siirala (2003) Romain Descharmes (2006) and featuring John O'Conor, Artistic Director |
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Here are the first two pages of the musical score, showing all four players' parts together. |
click to view the score at full screen width
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My encore choice also contains its own encore. You are about to hear 8 highly respected pianists, with international reputations, come together to perform Beethoven's Turkish March from the incidental music to The Ruins of Athens. Richard Blackford did not just produce an arrangement for them, he went on to produce a second arrangement. So you will hear both in this recording. You will reach a moment where the notice Please do not Adjust your Set ought to appear on screen! That's not bad playing, it's what Richard Blackford wrote for them. Sit back and enjoy the finale to a 1974 concert entitled A Gargantuan Pianistic Extravaganza. |
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) arr for 8 pianos by Richard Blackford (b1954, London) from incidental music for the play Die Ruinen von Athen The Ruins of Athens Op 113 • Turkish March (1812) performed by: Gina Bachauer • Jorge Bolet • Jeanne-Marie Darré • Alicia De Larrocha • John Lill • Radu Lupu • Garrick Ohlsson • Bálint Vázsonyi, at Gargantuan Pianistic Extravaganza, London, 1974 |
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Never miss a concert . . .
Our weekly* newsletter tells you about upcoming concerts and other local music events *weekly - only during the weekly concert season, occasional at other times |
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Music on Thursdays - Online
Cello Tango with 52 cellists music by Piazzolla • Albéniz • Carter Brey • Carlos Gardel • Villa-Lobos access concert: by clicking on the date or the picture Venue: this website and a place of your choosing |
Carter Brey, principal cellist, New York Symphonia
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Music on Thursdays - Organs Online
Organs of Paris ♥ Les Orgues de Paris organs from the top three Parisian churches, from the concert hall, and from one other venue artistes: Olivier Latry, Daniel Roth, Thomas Ospital, Jean Guillou, Wayne Marshall, Aaron Shows music, including improvisations, by: Latry • Marcel Dupré • JS Bach • Debussy • Ron Goodwin • Michel-Maurice Lévy • Marshall • Katchaturian • Saint-Saëns access concert: by clicking on the date or the pictures - from Thursday 18th June onwards Venue: this website and a place of your choosing |
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Music on Thursdays - Online
Flute Fest artistes: Sir James Galway ♦ Lady Jeanne Galway ♦ Paris Voxmusicorum Orchestra, conductor Ada Pelleg ♦ Icelandic Flute Ensemble David Antich, recorder ♦ Leonardo Luckert, cello ♦ Ignasi Jordà, harpsichord Gianluca Vanzelli, flute ♦ Kammerorchester Timisoara, conducter David Crescezi Shin-jung Oh, flute ♦ Heo Jung-hwa, piano ♦ Dave Valentin, jazz flute music by: Cimarosa • Boismortier • Händel • John Rutter • Pedro Flores access concert: by clicking on the date or the pictures Venue: this website and a place of your choosing |
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Music on Thursdays - Online
guest curator Lynda Chang with a personal musical selection titled Virtual Viola featuring music by: York Bowen • Telemann • Brahms • Rebecca Clarke performances by: Ting-Ru Lai ♦ Timothy Ridout ♦ Jeremy Berry Academia Bach de Buenos Aires access this concert: by clicking on the date or the picture Venue: this website and a place of your choosing |
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