Pianorama I

Pianorama is a recurring festival at Konserthuset Stockholm where the piano plays the main role in all concerts. Many of Sweden’s leading pianists will appear, as well as some of Sweden’s most prominent percussionists and string musicians. This year’s festival has a special focus on music for two pianos and four hands.

“Double the piano means piano with extra everything! The challenge is to play so that it sounds like two pianos together, yet still like a dialogue between two discernible voices,” says initiator and artistic director Roland Pöntinen.

Igor Stravinsky was an incredibly skilled pianist. The year before the great scandal at the world premiere of the orchestra version of The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913, he performed a version for two pianos with Claude Debussy. Music that still has a powerful, full-force impact on the listener.

Composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni was admired by Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg and he taught Edgard Varèse and Kurt Weill. But above all, he is famous for his many transcriptions of classical works. Here we will hear his arrangement of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for two pianos. In addition, we will hear music by Beethoven, Luciana Berio and Ravel.